The Beautiful Tree

by James Tooley

  Suddenly, I thought I better understood DfID’s motives for setting up its project. When I’d been traveling in the mountains, it became even more preposterous that what the poor needed was school development plans in the public schools! What a terrible crying waste of 11 million pounds, I’d thought. Now, I saw DfID sitting with bureaucrats like these, thrashing ideas around and finding the only thing that was harmless and unthreatening to the Chinese government. Who would complain if it were known internationally that the only thing lacking in Chinese schools for the poor was school development plans? That was much less threatening than the news that villagers were too poor to send their children to public schools, or that the public schools were too inaccessible, especially for girls. Perhaps that was it?

  At this point, (English-speaking) Zheng was called out of the room, so I asked Xiang if he had told Mr. Ming that we had seen the private schools for ourselves in the villages. Yes, yes. Shouldn’t we remind him? No, no.

  Mr. Ming slowly continued, while Xiang translated: “We have a close relationship with DfID, and we are very pleased to host the SDP project. Indeed, when your prime minister, Tony Blair, visited China he was very pleased to meet with delegates of the Gansu Basic Education Project. Now if you were to show to DfID that your ideas made a worthwhile, practical project, then we would obviously take this seriously, because we respect their judgment. But as it stands, I don’t see that you have a viable research project. Of course, you may apply for permission and we will consider it carefully.”

  We closed the meeting politely, with me apologizing profusely. I was crestfallen. I realized how stupid I had been in not realizing that my work might be threatening to the Chinese government. But the cat was out of the bag. What to do? Xiang, however, told me not to worry. He pointed out that we hadn’t yet asked for permission. We only visited to ask how we might go about getting permission! So we hadn’t actually been refused. The way was still open for us to conduct the research. But how? I certainly didn’t want to put Xiang and the team he had assembled at risk. He said they would not be and not to worry, they would get permission. And a few weeks later, much to my surprise, once I was safely back in England, and after several sumptuous banquets to get to know bureau chiefs better, they did.

  The Reality: Private Schools for the Poor in Rural China

  So we conducted the research in Gansu province. Xiang hired a dedicated team from the Gansu Marketing Research Company, a specialized research organization with a network of researchers across the province. We used a large team (48 research supervisors and 310 researchers), distributed across all 14 regions of Gansu. We gave all researchers and supervisors a two-day training session. Just as in the other studies, the aim, we told them, was to locate all private primary and secondary schools in rural Gansu. For comparison purposes, researchers were also asked to locate a public school “nearby” each located private school, defined as being within a maximum of one day’s travel for the researchers, who were traveling mainly on foot. The researchers were allocated to areas that they knew reasonably well. They could ask for lists of private schools from the local education bureau, but were warned that such lists might not be forthcoming, nor complete. In addition, they should ask local residents, in markets or on the street, whether other schools existed, unacknowledged by local authorities.

  Because we were using such a large team, quality control was especially important. All questionnaires from the school had to be imprinted with the official school stamp and contact telephone number. Researchers were required to photograph each school to prove that they had visited it—I have a large album of all these schools now. All schools were subsequently telephoned, if possible by the supervisors, to check whether the researchers had in fact conducted the survey and observation.

  What did we find? In total, there were 586 private schools located in the villages, serving village populations.2 These were our “private schools for the poor.” Of course, this figure is a lower bound, as we cannot be sure we found all the schools that were not on the provincial list of schools: officially, Gansu province has only 26 primary schools, all of which are based in the cities and larger towns, not in villages.3

  The researchers also identified 309 government schools that were in villages “nearby” the private schools. (The number is smaller than the private school total because in some areas, the researchers found no “nearby” public schools.) These were only a very small fraction of the total in Gansu—there are 15,635 primary schools alone. The researchers told us that in the major towns and the larger crowded, bustling villages, they would find a public school, often a fine two-story building, sporting, as we too had found, a plaque marking it as a recipient of some foreign aid. To find the private schools, researchers had to abandon public transport and either walk or hitch a ride on one of the three-wheelers to travel up the even steeper mountain paths to the small clusters of houses that made up smaller, more remote villages. And there, nestled on mountain ridges, were stone or brick houses converted to schools, with the proprietor or headmaster living with his family in one or two of its rooms. Sometimes the school was purpose-built, constructed by the villagers themselves. Over and over again, researchers followed these trails high into the arid mountains to discover the private schools.

  In the 586 private schools for the poor, it was reported, nearly 60,000 children were enrolled, an average of about 100 children per school. The largest school had 540 students, whereas the smallest had 5. There was a slightly higher percentage of girls in the private than in the public schools. Unlike the other country studies, private schools for the poor in China did not cater to a huge proportion of the school population—we estimated around 2 percent of schoolchildren were in private schools. However, the fact that they were there at all, apparently completely unknown to the regional officials, seemed itself remarkable enough.

  What fees did these schools charge? It is significant that during the time we were conducting the research, public schools charged fees—this was an anomaly that the Chinese government had been taken to task over by the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to education. The vast majority of the schools charged fees, by the semester (i.e., twice annually). The mean semester fees in private schools ranged from 68.79 renminbi ($8.56) in first grade to 78.66 renminbi ($9.78) in sixth grade. In public schools, the mean fees were slightly higher for most grades.

  Who managed the private schools? Around two-thirds of private schools were managed by a group of villagers, whereas individual proprietors managed around one-third. And why did private school managers establish their schools? The most commonly reported reason was the inaccessibility of the public schools—reported by three-quarters of the total. It was clear from follow-up interviews with school managers that the public schools were too far from their villages—sometimes requiring children to walk five or six hours to get there—so this was the major reason for setting up a private school in the village itself.

  The Extra Mile

  In short, despite the denial of those in power, private schools for the poor exist in large numbers in rural China. They are set up by villagers and proprietors to cater to children whose needs are not being met by the public schools—mainly because they are simply too far away from the remote mountain villages. But officials from the government and the aid agencies denied their existence. Perhaps those from the aid agencies genuinely didn’t know they existed. The private schools are hard to find. Go to the very remote villages, along paved or poorly maintained dirt roads, and you’ll find a public school. And if you’re an outsider, having taken the already long, arduous, and breathtakingly beautiful journey through the mountains there, why would you assume that there is anything beyond, educationally speaking? Especially when everyone, from officials to the public school teachers, said that there was not? To find the private schools, you must go the extra mile—or even an extra day’s travel. Not everyone is prepared to do that.

  For the officials, the reasons may be the same, o
r it may also be because of the sensitivity of China’s purported position as having achieved universal public primary education. By the time I visited Gansu, the Chinese government had been roughly criticized, by among others the UN special rapporteur on the right to education, for still charging school fees at the primary level.4 If it then had to admit that some children were in private schools because they were too poor to attend public schools, or because no convenient public school was provided for them, then this would add weight to the criticisms.

  Anyway, taking these criticisms to heart, the Chinese government recently announced moves to bring in free public education, starting in the poor rural areas in western China, including Gansu.5 The development experts regard free public education as something of a panacea; it is required before a country can be considered as properly developed—indeed, a necessary path to that development. It’s all part of what everyone knows.

  But is free primary education really the universal remedy held up by the development experts, or could it bring its own problems? This was another part of the accepted wisdom that I was being forced to confront as I made my journey. Before I’d even gone to China, I’d visited Kenya, which had introduced free primary education in January 2003, only months before I’d secured the project funding to do my research. What I’d found there on my first visit made me realize that I must do the research there too. The Kenyan findings were to astonish even me, despite what I was already seeing in India, Nigeria, and Ghana.

  6. A Kenyan Conundrum—and Its Solution

  The Man to Meet

  Television anchor Peter Jennings asked former U.S. president Bill Clinton on ABC’s Primetime which one living person he would most like to meet. He chose the current president of Kenya “because he has abolished school fees.” By doing that, Clinton said, “he would affect more lives than any president had done or would ever do by the end of this year.” The upshot was that President Kibaki invited Bill Clinton to Nairobi to see for himself how free primary education was being implemented.1

  While chancellor of the exchequer, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also went to Kenya as part of his “Discover Africa” tour.2 The BBC filmed him in a public school, Olympic, on the outskirts of Kibera, reportedly the largest slum in Africa. Schoolchildren surrounded him, singing the praises of free education introduced by the new National Rainbow Coalition government in January 2003. He told the gathered multitude that British parents gave their full support to their taxpayers’ money being used to support free primary education. “Our new resolution,” he announced, “for every country must be universal free education—the best and most empowering investment we could ever make.” Official sources acclaimed that an extra 1.3 million children—up 22 percent, from 5.9 million to 7.2 million—were now enrolled in primary school in Kenya because of free primary education. The capital of Kenya itself, Nairobi, boasted a 48 percent increase in primary school enrollment. And because the World Bank gave the Kenyan government $55 million, the largest grant to any social sector, to finance free primary education, the pressure was on to match this international generosity in other countries. All the new children in primary school, Brown was adamant, have been saved from ignorance by the benevolence of the international community—which must give $7 billion to $8 billion more per year so that other countries can emulate Kenya’s success.

  On the face of it, Clinton’s choice sounded like a good one. The poor, by definition, have few resources; having to fork out for schooling is bound to hurt them harder than anyone else. So providing them with free schooling would seem to be a good thing. After all, it’s what we take for granted in Britain and America too. If it’s good enough for us, it must also be good enough for those in poor countries, surely?

  Everyone seems to agree. Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations and author of the bestseller The End of Poverty, with a foreword by pop star Bono, has “eliminating school fees” at the top of his list of “Quick Wins” for development, funded through increased international donor aid.3 The United Nations Development Programme says that requiring “poor households to pay for schooling (private or public) is not conducive to achieving universal primary education.” In countries where primary school fees have been removed, “children have flooded into schools.” Oxfam International is just as clear: “The case for abolishing user fees for primary education is largely accepted.” So is Save the Children: requiring parents to pay fees makes the difference “between a child’s attendance at school or their removal from the education system.” Abolishing school fees is especially needed for girls: poor parents “overwhelmingly choose to invest in their sons rather than their daughters” when deciding on which to send to school. And getting rid of school fees releases the pent-up demand for education. Countries held up as great examples of how this has worked include Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya, where abolishing school fees “almost overnight” has led to a huge increase in primary school enrollment.

  The Conundrum

  So it’s all relatively straightforward and uncontroversial. School fees are bound to put the poor off sending their children to school; getting rid of them is the right idea and has no obvious disadvantages of its own.

  This might be the end of the story. Except that while reading these tales of success, I came across a conundrum that went along with that success, which seemed to sorely perplex the development experts. I found that Dr. Pauline Rose of the University of Sussex expressed this puzzle particularly well. Yes, she agreed, abolishing fees in government schools in Uganda and Malawi had led to millions more children in school. But, she noted, curiously, private schools for the poor had “mushroomed” at apparently the very same time that these free primary education policies were being enacted! Rose pointed to one study from remote rural Uganda that showed that fully 40 percent of primary school pupils attended private schools, with private school enrollment much higher in the towns and cities. This mass enrollment in private schools puzzled her: “If children were previously out of school,” she mused, “in countries such as Malawi and Uganda because of inability to pay fees and enrollment increased dramatically following their abolition, how is it possible that these same poor families can now afford to pay fees in private schools instead?”4

  My research in Kenya gave some pointers for solving this conundrum. My study started there in October 2003, some 10 months after free primary education had been introduced in government primary schools. Indeed, the solution to the conundrum seemed rather simple, if one only bothered to go and look.

  Kibera

  Former president Bill Clinton wasn’t the only one to notice that Kenya had introduced free primary education. Early in 2003, when deciding which countries to focus on for the research, James Stanfield, one of my research associates at Newcastle, suggested that we look at Kenya. He’d seen BBC footage of crowds of children flocking to the newly-free-of-tuition state schools, with the commentator praising this great success story. “What’s really going on there?” he asked. “Is it really as good as it seems?” And so I decided to visit to see if our contacts there could help us with the project.

  As usual, it seemed unpromising at first. When I arrived at the airport, I was met by my host James Shikwati, who had recently established the Inter-Region Economic Network in Nairobi, which was to become one of Africa’s foremost free-market think tanks. James is a very bright, articulate young man in his early 30s, someone who very much believes that free enterprise can help solve Africa’s problems, and he is committed to fighting excessive state intervention in all sorts of areas of the economy. I had communicated with him a few weeks before my visit, telling him of my finding private schools for the poor in India, my preliminary investigations in Nigeria and Ghana, and my interest in finding whether the same was true of Kenya. He had been very sympathetic to the idea and had promised to ask around and assist me in my quest in whatever way he could.

  I arrived at Nairobi International Airport to be greeted by his bombshell: “I think I
should tell you,” he began, a bit embarrassed, “there aren’t any private schools for the poor here.” Although accustomed to this kind of remark, hearing it from someone of James’s caliber had me a little worried—if anyone should know about their existence, it should be someone like James, who was aware of how the private sector was helping the poor in other areas. But no, “I’ve asked everyone who knows anything about education,” he said, sensing my unease, “and I’m sorry, they’re not here.” He’d asked teachers, sympathetic academics, and some friends who worked in the Ministry of Education. Everyone told him the same thing: “Private schools here, you see, are mainly for the elite and middle classes.” Perhaps again he was right? I said we’d go and look anyway. That wasn’t the only mild frustration on my arrival in Kenya. Again, my baggage didn’t arrive at the airport, and I was left for several days without a change of clothes. (A few days later, still with no baggage, I went shopping for essentials, including trousers. “I have a short leg,” I helpfully told the attractive young shop assistant, idly leaning forward rocking her tummy on the counter. “Only one?” she inquired.)

  The next morning, however, things brightened up. I had suggested that we must at least go and look in one poor area; James’s driver, Alfas, was acquainted with the slum of Kibera, not too far away from James’s office. “You never know, we might find something,” I said. We should check, just in case all the people James had spoken to were wrong. Alfas parked the car at the top of a bumpy road by the government offices—“Hopefully, if we leave it here, everyone will think it’s a government official on business,” said James. So we walked into the slum. Apparently, over half a million people lived here, crowded into an area the size of Manhattan’s Central Park. Corrugated-iron-roofed huts crowded alongside the narrow muddy track that was the main thoroughfare into the settlement. The mud was deep and suspiciously colored—it was one of Nairobi’s two rainy seasons, and everyone was walking on a narrow spit of slightly drier path weaving along the edge of the track, but our feet were already deep in the mud, or whatever it was. Along the track ran an open sewer and piled along its sides were all kinds of trash and household effluent.