Private Education for the Poor: Lessons for America

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Private Education for the PoorLessons for
America?

• James Tooley, PhD
• University of Newcastle Upon Tyne
• www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest

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Three assumptions

• 1 Private education for the poor does not
  exist
• 2 Free compulsory public education is the
  only way to increase enrolment for the poor
• 3 private education for the poor must be of a
  lower quality than public provision

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Challenges from five countries
CHINA
GHANA
INDIA
NIGERIA
KENYA
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Format

• Three assumptions
• Challenges from five countries
• .Lessons for America?

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Assumption 1

• Private education for the poor does not exist.

• The poor?
• Census data slum areas lowest income quintile
  villages
• Typical families earn 300-400 a year i.e, a
  dollar a day.

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In slums searching for schools
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A Tale of Three Surveys Slums and low-income
villages
Schools (provisional)
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Challenge 1

• Private education for the poor forms a majority
  of the provision for poor families. (Think Why
  not in America?)
• Official enrolment figures drastically
  under-represent enrolment.

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What are the schools like?
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Counter-intuitively profitable
Table 3 Private school for the poor Makoko,
Lagos income and expenditure
Hyderabad private school 550 Pupils _at_ 36 per
year 19 teachers _at_ 400 per year
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Federations for self-protection
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Assumption 2

• Free (public) education is required to increase
  enrolment for the poor, not private education.

• Assumption of World Bank, UNESCO, Unicef, Save
  the Children, DfID, USAID, Oxfam all national
  governments everyone else

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The denial Kenya style

• Government of Kenya, (and hence Oxfam, UNESCO,
  World Bank, etc.), says there are no private
  schools in the slums of Nairobi.

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and the reality

• Kibera 76 private primary and secondary schools,
  enrolling 12,132 students, plus 59 nursery
  schools.
• In Mukuru and Kawangware, 92 and 88 private
  primary and secondary schools respectively, with
  total enrolment of about 15,000 students.

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The downside of the denial

• The Government of Kenya, spurred on by the UN
  (UNESCO, UNICEF) Free Primary Education (FPE),
  2003.
• World Bank gave 50 million largest grant ever.
• DfID and others chipped in too.

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The downside of the denial
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Challenge 2

• Free public education serves to crowd out private
  education (Think lessons for America?)
• But what of the quality of the private education?

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Assumption 3

• Private education for the poor is of a lower
  quality than public provision
• Three approaches
• Parental focus groups
• Survey of inputs
• Survey of achievement

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I send my children to this private school because
I find that the education in private school is
better than the education in government school.
While most of the teachers in government school
are just resting and doing their own things, in
private school our teachers are very much busy
doing their best, because they know we pay them
by ourselves.
This is the first time anyone has ever asked us
whether we want free primary education or not.
Kenya - Kibera Parental Views
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Before the free education programme was
introduced, the teachers were busy with the
pupils now, they know there is no money coming
in, so they are not really concerned. Here, in
the private school the teacher is busy with the
children from morning to evening and there, in
the government school you find that the teachers
do not teach the way they used to.
You will never see in a private school a
teacher working on something else like sewing a
sweater while he or she supposed to be in class.
If you are offered free fruit and vegetables at
the market, you know they will be rotten. If you
want fresh produce, then you have to pay for it.
In the government school they say it is free
education and the teachers find it so easy,
because they know there is no one going to check
up what they are doing.
Kenya - Kibera Parental Views
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Parental focus groups

• The quality of teaching is higher in the private
  schools
• teachers are more accountable to parents and
  headteachers in the private schools, because
  parents pay fees.
• Accountability is the key (Think Lessons for
  America?)

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Survey of INPUTS
Hyderabad Study
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Survey of INPUTS
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Survey of Outputs
4,000 Grade 4children in each country/state
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Survey of 4,000 children
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ENGLISH
Hyderabad
RAW scores
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Hyderabad
MATHS
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Hyderabad
URDU
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Hyderabad
IQ controlling variable
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Lessons for America?

• Lessons for aid and international agencies
• Knowledge gap
• Misguided funding of public only
• Think private!

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Lessons for America?

• Lessons for school choice reform
• key concepts
• accountability
• crowding out
• edu-preneurs
• free is rotten

Can you have real accountability without fees?
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Lessons for America?

• Fundamental challenge to those opposed to school
  choice
• What E.G. West did using evidence from history,
  we can do using evidence from developing
  countries.

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Lessons for America?

• If working class parents were prepared to back
  the choice they then possessed with money, why
  should they be presumed unfit to choose today
  when they are so much richer? (The Times)

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Lessons for America Inspiration?
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www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest