by James Tooley
• The higher standards in private schools were usually maintained for a small fraction of the per-pupil teacher cost in government schools.
That is, the research showed that private schools were not only more effective but also more cost efficient than the public schools.
As the results came in and were analyzed, and I realized what they were showing, I began to sense that I was onto something extremely important. Early in my journey, I’d been met with denial from those in government and many development experts that private schools for the poor even existed. The evidence my teams had accumulated—and evidence from others now working in this area—showed beyond doubt that they were there, and in fact were serving a majority of schoolchildren in poor areas. Now no one could deny their existence. But development experts were still unimpressed: They were adamant that these private schools, especially the unrecognized schools, were fly-by-nights, run by unscrupulous businesspeople intent on ripping off the poor. And the poor, well they were ignoramuses (but don’t let’s use that word) for letting themselves be so hoodwinked. The quality of educational provision in these private schools was suspect, to say the least. You could see for yourself how bad it all was in the low-cost private schools, just by seeing the poor-quality infrastructure and by knowing that teachers were untrained and underpaid.
Well, that was not at all what the results showed. The results seemed to indicate pretty categorically that the development experts didn’t have a leg to stand on. It became clearer and clearer that poor parents were keen education consumers when they chose private over public schools.
Small Is Beautiful
There’s a big debate in the West about whether class size matters.1 Whatever may be true in the United States or United Kingdom, where class sizes are already relatively small, any government intervention—hugely expensive interventions at that—would lead only to small reductions in these already small classrooms. But in developing countries, it may be different. Certainly, poor parents appear to see things differently. One of the major reasons, parents have told me, they send their children to private schools is that classes in public schools are simply too big. Parents simply believe that teachers won’t be able to teach their children; they worry their children will get lost in such large classes. Other things being equal, for poor parents class size appears to be a key factor in their choice of private schools.
And my researchers found in every case, average class sizes were smaller in private schools than in public schools (see Figure 1). In Delhi, the pupil-teacher ratio was three times higher in government than private unrecognized classes. In Hyderabad and Mahbubnagar, government class sizes were nearly twice as large as those in private unrecognized schools. In Ga, Ghana, government class sizes were over twice as large as those in private unrecognized schools. In Lagos State, Nigeria, they were one and a half times larger.
More Committed Teachers
Calling unannounced on primary school classes, my researchers found in all cases that teaching commitment was highest in the recognized private schools, followed closely by unrecognized private schools. In all cases, it was lowest in the government schools: • In Delhi, teachers were teaching in only 38 percent of government classrooms during our investigators’ visits, compared with around 70 percent in both types of private unaided schools.
Figure 1.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF FOURTH-GRADE PUPILS IN CLASS
SOURCE: Author’s own data.
• In Hyderabad, 75 percent of government teachers were teaching, compared with 98 percent in recognized and 91 percent in unrecognized private unaided schools.
• In Mahbubnagar, 64 percent of government teachers were teaching, compared with 80 percent in unrecognized and 83 percent in recognized private unaided schools.
• In Lagos State, 67 percent of government teachers were teaching, compared with 88 percent and 87 percent of the recognized and unrecognized private teachers, respectively.
• In Ga, only 57 percent of teachers in government schools were teaching at the time researchers arrived unannounced, compared with 75 percent and 66 percent of teachers in recognized and unrecognized private schools, respectively.
Providing What Parents Want
Language is a major issue in Indian education. Mother-tongue teaching is the prescription in government primary schools, usually up to fifth grade. While English was made an official language in India in 1967, alongside Hindi, each state also has its own official language—in Andhra Pradesh, it is Telugu—and each state has “clamoured to prioritize and preserve its own language in state schools.”2 But then in the poor areas of Hyderabad that we researched, the majority of families are Muslim, hence Urdu-speaking. Each of these languages has a different script. This means that in public schools in Andhra Pradesh, young children are taught in either Telugu or Urdu and must learn both languages, as well as Hindi. English was not usually introduced until about fifth grade, although government schools in Andhra Pradesh have recently started teaching it in first grade. But poor parents told me that they wanted their children to be proficient in English, which they perceived to be the international language, the language that would help their children get ahead in business and commerce and lift their families out of poverty. And they felt that English-medium schools (those that teach all subjects in English) were the way to do this. An important reason, they told me, for choosing private schools was that they were English medium. Private schools, they said, provided what they wanted rather than what the government said they should have.
In our research, we found that private schools were much more likely to be English medium than government schools. In Andhra Pradesh, India, they were in the majority, even in rural areas: In Hyderabad, 88 percent of recognized and 80 percent of unrecognized private unaided schools reported they were English medium, compared with fewer than 1 percent of government schools. The majority of government schools (73 percent) were Urdu medium. In Delhi, nearly half (47 percent) the recognized private unaided schools were English medium, whereas 21 percent of unrecognized private unaided schools were English medium. Many of the private unrecognized schools, however, provided both Hindi- and English-medium streams (34 percent). Only 3 percent of government schools were English medium, the majority being Hindi medium (80 percent). Even in rural Mahbubnagar, well over half the recognized (51 percent) and unrecognized (57 percent) private unaided schools reported they were English medium or had two streams, one of which was English, compared with fewer than 1 percent of government schools.
Whose “Hidden Curriculum”?
So private school teachers are more committed than their government counterparts; class sizes are smaller; and private schools provide poor parents with what they view as a preferred route out of poverty. But what of the buildings and facilities within the schools? What of trained teachers? Clearly, they are what most trouble the development experts and government officials who castigate the private schools for their low quality. One such troubled expert is Professor Keith Lewin of the University of Sussex, whom the BBC interviewed for the film we made in Nigeria. Sitting comfortably in his London flat, Indian icons on the mantelpiece behind him, he was adamant that private schools for the poor were of low quality and not part of any educational solution: “There is a hidden curriculum in all these places,” he said. “If there are no latrines, if there is no clean running water in the school, it tells you something about the attitude of the management of that school and the motivation of the people that run it.”
I put this to a father who sent his child to Ken Ade Private School in the shantytown of Makoko. He was angry. The gist of what he said went like this: “Our homes don’t have water, we don’t have toilets either! The school buildings are much better than our homes. Why is he insulting us like this?” The conditions of the school simply reflect—no, are an improvement on—normal life in Makoko. So why do people like Professor Lewin suggest that only schools that are up to his Western standards are acceptable? That’s not what paren
ts believe.
In any case, comparing provision in the budgets of private schools with that in government schools, the reality is the exact opposite of Professor Lewin’s insinuations. My researchers collected data on a range of 14 quality inputs to schools. On only one input—the provision of playgrounds—were government schools superior across the different studies. What might this say, I wonder, about the “attitude” and “motivation” of the government authorities and their development partners? It’s true also that in Ghana, Nigeria, and Andhra Pradesh, India, aid agencies, including DfID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the European Union, had recently been on a spending spree in the government schools, refurbishing them, sometimes providing entirely new schools, and equipping them with luxury goods like televisions. So private schools were not operating on a level playing field. No wealthy outside agencies were assisting them. Even so, often they do better.
My research teams looked at a range of inputs that could reasonably be viewed as proxies for quality. First, there were those related to the health and hygiene of students: drinking water, toilets for children, and separate toilets for boys and girls. Second were those concerning the comfort and safety of children: that is, pucca, proper, not temporary, buildings; desks; chairs; electricity; fans; and a playground. Third, there were those that showed some investment by the school authorities in learning facilities: blackboards, libraries, tape recorders, computers, and televisions.
In the vast majority of cases in all areas, both types of private schools, unrecognized and recognized, were either superior to government schools in providing these inputs, or there was no significant difference between school types. In Hyderabad, for instance, this was true of all indicators. In Delhi, it was true of 10 out of 13; in Mahbubnagar and Lagos State, 11 out of 13; and in Ga, 10 out of 14.
For a small number of inputs, government provision was superior to that in private unrecognized schools, but not to that in private recognized schools. In Delhi, this was only true for tape recorders; in Hyderabad, it wasn’t true for any inputs; whereas in Mahbubnagar, it was true for playgrounds and televisions. (Interestingly, a large aid project in rural Andhra Pradesh has provided televisions ostensibly for learning purposes, which might explain their more common presence in government schools. However, the research disappointingly showed that they weren’t actually used for learning but remained in the principal’s office.) In Ga, it was true for proper buildings, desks (the private unrecognized schools usually made do with a combined bench and worktop rather than a desk), playground, and blackboards, whereas in Lagos it was true only for pucca buildings.
Finally, in only a tiny proportion of cases (a total of three indicators for the entire sample) were amenities in government schools superior to both types of private schools: in Delhi, separate toilets for boys and girls and playgrounds, and in Lagos, playgrounds. That’s all.
If there is a “hidden curriculum” in schools for the poor, my findings clearly indicate that private schools are not the rogues.
Children in Private Schools Outperform Those in Public School
What about teacher training? Government schools are very likely to have more extensively trained and educated teachers than private schools. In Hyderabad, for instance, only around 7 percent of government school teachers lacked a college degree. In the private recognized schools, the figure was nearly 30 percent, whereas in unrecognized schools it was over 40 percent. In Ga, Ghana, around 75 percent of all teachers in private schools (both registered and unregistered) had attended school only until senior secondary (equivalent to 12th grade), compared with only 40 percent of government school teachers. In Lagos State, Nigeria, over 25 percent of teachers in unrecognized private schools were educated to senior secondary, whereas there were no teachers whose education had stopped at this level in the government schools. But when critics dismiss private schools for not having extensively trained teachers, the key reason they do is because they assume the teachers will be less effective. We’ve already seen that these untrained teachers are far more likely to show up and teach than their more heavily trained counterparts in government schools. Does their lack of training make any difference to student achievement—a key indicator of their effectiveness? It turns out that it does not. Private schools again turn out to be superior to government schools.
In all the studies, the same pattern was found for the “raw” mean scores, with private recognized schools achieving the highest, followed by private unrecognized and government schools achieving the lowest scores—except for the sole case of Urdu-language achievement in Hyderabad (see Figures 2 and 3).
The results from Delhi were typical. In mathematics, mean scores of children in government schools were 24.5 percent, whereas they were 42.1 percent in private unrecognized schools and 43.9 percent in private recognized. That is, children in unrecognized private schools scored nearly 18 percentage points more in math than children in government schools (a 72 percent advantage!), while children in recognized private schools scored over 19 percentage points more than children in government schools (a 79 percent advantage). In English, the performance difference was much greater (children in unrecognized schools enjoyed a 35 percentage point advantage over their public school counterparts, whereas children in recognized schools scored 41 percentage points more). However, these differences might be expected, given that government schools are not providing what parents want, English medium. (On the other hand, they might not be expected, given an oft-repeated criticism that private schools are English medium in name only—that this is just another way they pull the wool over ignorant poor parents’ eyes.
Figure 2.
INDIA: RAW SCORES
SOURCE: Author’s own data.
What we found showed that the private schools were in fact educating their children to a much higher English standard than what children might pick up naturally in the local community, through radio, television, and advertisements, for instance—which is perhaps what the tests were measuring in children in government schools.)
But in any case, if more private schools are English medium, we might expect government schools to be superior in achievement in Hindi; the opposite was true. Children in private unrecognized schools achieved on average 22 percentage points more than children in government schools (an 83 percent advantage). In recognized private schools, children scored on average 24 percentage points more (an 89 percent advantage).
In Hyderabad, similar results were found for mathematics and English. However, in Urdu, the results for government and private schools were roughly similar—although private unrecognized schools had the highest average score (30.5 percent), followed by government (29.1 percent); private recognized had the lowest (25.4 percent).
These raw scores are indicative, but not the end of the story—for it may be that there are simply brighter children from slightly wealthier backgrounds (although all parents were of course quite poor) going to private schools, and hence the private schools have an unfair advantage over government schools. In any case, we’ve seen that the private schools have better inputs in general than government schools—so perhaps these also make a difference to attainment? What we need is some way to statistically adjust the data to see what would happen if children with the same characteristics were in government and private schools—and for these schools also to have the same characteristics. Things get rather technical at this point—interested readers can consult the academic papers on my website to explore the range of statistical methods used and the results obtained (www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest). But the simple message from all the detailed statistical analyses is that they made no important differences to the “raw” scores above. Controlling for the range of background variables, including education and wealth of parents, students’ IQs, and peer-group effects, the differences were usually slightly reduced but generally still large and still favored both types of private schools in each study. For instance, in Hyderabad, a child attending a private unrecognized scho
ol would be predicted to gain 16.1 percentage points more in mathematics than the same child attending a government school. In a private recognized school, the difference in scores would be 17.3 percentage points. In English, the advantages would be even greater—16.9 percentage points more in an unrecognized school and 18.9 percentage points in a recognized school. Interestingly, in Urdu, after controlling for the background variables, there was no statistically significant difference between government and either type of private school.
Figure 3.
AFRICA: RAW SCORES
More Effectiveand More Efficient
Do the private schools achieve better results because they are better financed? This is what the development experts claim, on those occasions when they acknowledge superior private-sector performance. The Oxfam Education Report states it thus: “There is little hard evidence to substantiate the view that private schools systematically outperform public schools with comparable levels of resourcing.”3 And the United Nations Development Programme makes the even stronger claim that “private schools do not systematically outperform public schools with comparable resources.”4
Is either true? In my research, I wasn’t able to obtain detailed information on actual income and expenditure within any type of school—private school managers in general were understandably wary of divulging sensitive financial information to researchers (although I did get figures for case study schools, which I’ll come to later), while government principals said that this information should be obtained from the Ministry of Education, which was not generally forthcoming. However, it was possible to elicit data from the primary school teachers in the random sample on what is, in any case, the most significant element of school budgets—teacher salaries—estimated to make up the vast majority (80 to 96 percent) of all recurring expenditures in government primary schools in developing countries.5