The Impact of Private Schools, School Chains and PPPs in Developing Countries

Abstract

The private school sector has expanded with almost no public intervention to educate half of primary school children in many urban centers in Africa and Asia. Simple comparisons of test scores would suggest that these private schools may provide better quality than public schools, but how much of this difference is due to selection effects is unclear. Much donor and policymaker attention has proceeded on the basis that private schools do perform better, and focused on models of public subsidy to expand access, and investment in networks or chains to encourage expansion. We review the evidence of the effects of private schools on learning, and how that effect translates to public-private partnerships (PPPs). We also study the effects of private school chains. We conduct a systematic review for eligible studies, with transparent search criteria. The search resulted in over 100 studies on low-cost private schools and PPPs, with a large majority being on low-cost private schools. Our meta-analysis shows moderately strong effects from private schooling, although the limited number of experimental studies find much smaller effects than quasi-experimental studies. This advantage, though, is not nearly enough to help most children reach important learning goals. Turning to policy goals, we find that the private school advantage has not translated to public private partnerships, which have shown limited value in improving quality. They can however represent a lower-cost means of increasing access to school. We also find that private school chains perform little better than individual private schools and have little scope for achieving meaningful scale.

Critical approaches to private education in the Global South

“…While private schools appeared to outrank public schools in teaching, they fared no better in most other areas, including regulatory oversight, administration and cost, test scores, and class and gender equity. Crawfurd and Hares (2021), who performed their own review of studies since Day Ashley et al's was originally published, in 2014, concluded: "There is now considerable evidence that the average effectiveness of private schools is not substantially higher than that of public schools" (ibid. : 22).…”

“…Additionally, private school teachers are often not as well trained as their peers in government systems, while their teaching strategies, which can include rote memorization, drilling, and other unimaginative tasks, are as or less effective than what prevails in public schools (Nambissan, 2012). The situation is unsustainable, it would seem, based on a growing number of strike actions across the Global South and the choice of some teachers to leave the profession altogether (Bold et al, 2013;Crawfurd & Hares, 2021;Srivastava, 2010).…”

“…The more obstacles that funders and managers of private schools encountered, the more likely they were to set up unregulated, unmonitored schools that reinforce existing inequalities among the poor and between the poor and the rich. As Crawfurd and Hares (2021) show in their own original empirical research in the US, UK, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Uganda, school chains produce the best outcomes for the widest array of students in those contexts where governments can effectively hold them accountable by withholding licenses and other means of support until certain benchmarks around access and quality are met.…”

“…Nearly 40% of primary-aged children in South Asia attend some form of private school, double the figure from 2000, while private primary enrollment stands at 14% in sub-Saharan Africa and 21% in Latin America. Crawfurd and Hares (2021), in their own analysis of World Bank data, point out that more than half of all children in urban India and other cities across Africa and Latin America attend private schools, while the percentage of children in private secondary and preprimary schools is even higher than it is at the primary level.…”

“…Those who test the claims that underline the popularity and growth of private education in low-and middle-income countries find that private schools that focus on the poor often reinforce inequalities by favoring more privileged families over those lacking in basic necessities, boys over girls, and urban over rural populations (Day Ashley et al, 2014). Even among those poor children who attend private schools, scholars find little improvement in literacy and numeracy rates compared to what children in government schools achieve (Crawfurd & Hares, 2021). Other scholars, however, develop analyses that operate at a distant remove from specific schools and programs and instead combine data and social theory to reveal how corporate money, individual wealth, and celebrity influence subvert government systems of education with a goal to maximize profit (Ball & Olmedo, 2011;Olmedo, 2019).…”