Do corporate sponsorships and ad campaigns threaten public education?

This paper aims to produce analytical-theoretical contributions on the school as a new medium, analysing its central role in mediating between state, market and civil society. The field of in-school marketing is largely unexplored in Portugal1. The guideline questions, rooted in a consumer society are as follows: which social win-win relationship practices or legitimacy/visibility ones are evident in their interaction with the school system?; how do in-school marketing activities square with public-private corporate responsibility?; are the ethical parameters of legislated and self-regulated best practice principles synonymous with consensus? Another purpose was also testing a Working with Schools Best Practice Principles as a self-regulatory tool aimed at school decision-makers to analyze how schools and their partners can build an ethical and responsible relationship. The methodology combines a quantitative analysis via questionnaires to school group representative’s management committees (10-15 years old children) and a qualitative approach via document analysis and semi-structured interviews with public-private stakeholders. Our results lead us to negate hypotheses which speak of school ‘marketisation’, despite school´s weak role in this mediation, and the prevalence of responsible in-school marketing based on best practice principles. They also lead us to support the hypothesis describing ideologically antagonistic positions and to conclude overall that reproduction and conception of these activities works towards an iconic shaping of schools´ organizational identity and a socio-symbolical integration of the educational community into a hegemonic culture.

Keywords:

in-school marketing , school commercialism , corporate responsibility , Working with Schools Best Practice Principles , school marketisation