by James Tooley
The first reason seemed easiest to dismiss. It was what one attendee was getting at when he said my ideas were “dangerous”—that, if taken up by the wrong people, they could lead to “the demise of state education.” I’d read it in several places. The PROBE Report said that if poor parents support private education, this “carries a real danger of undermining the government schooling system.”1 Kevin Watkins, the author of The Oxfam Education Report and now director of the United Nations Development Programme, wrote that parents should not “withdraw their children from the public education system and put them in private schools,” for this “reduces parental pressure to improve government schools.” It was what I had heard way back when Sajitha Bashir challenged me after my first visit to the slums of Hyderabad. If poor parents continue to flee public education en masse, the experts fear, the very existence of public education itself is threatened.
But to me this seemed to be what the Americans call a no-brainer. If the education of the poor is what we desire, why should we care whether they get it in public or private systems? If private schools could be made available to all, including the poorest and most excluded, and to girls—and there could be ways of ensuring this (see below)—and if their quality, already higher than the government alternative, can be improved through judicious support (again, see below), then from the poor’s perspective, why would it be relevant whether this would undermine the state system, providing that education for all was achieved? As the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping once observed: “Who cares if the cat is black or white? It’s a good cat if it catches the mouse!” Why should the poor mind what color their cat is?
The second major reason why private education wasn’t the way forward for the poor had to do with “market failure.” Development experts tend to use this term synonymously with education being a “public good,” and there being “externalities” of education that need to be taken into account. At issue here, perhaps surprisingly given the complex way it is often described, seems something rather simple. The UNDP puts it like this: Governments should “finance and provide” primary education because “market prices alone” would not capture its “intrinsic value and social benefits.” Why not? Because basic education “benefits not only the individual who gains knowledge, it also benefits all members of society by improving health and hygiene behaviour and raising worker productivity.”
The basic idea, then, is that there are social benefits to be had from people being educated. If a parent educates his child, this child, so the theory goes, will contribute to society by being healthier, by being more productive at work, by being literate, and so on. But these public benefits, it is claimed, are not reflected in the market price of education, so there will be “market failure.” That is, in the absence of the state’s providing and financing education, not enough people will buy enough education, of the right sort, to provide these social benefits. That’s what the conference critic was claiming about my position.
I’ve wrestled with this, and it seems to me that it’s not as powerful an objection as the development experts imagine it to be. Suppose we’re in a system where there is no public provision and financing of education. A poor parent is deciding whether to educate her child. Private schooling costs a certain amount, and her resources are very limited. She certainly values the benefits that education brings to society generally. She values low incidence of disease, the benefits of democracy, and social cohesion—in very practical terms. Disease hits her hard, for instance, and may have already killed some of her children. A lack of democracy leads to corrupt bureaucrats who pester her and her family for bribes. A lack of social cohesion leads to communal riots, which adversely affect her family and livelihood. Clearly, she would benefit from every child, including her own, being educated.
But, weighing it all, she decides not to educate her child because she chooses to allocate her resources to different ends. She can “free ride” on others getting educated, so some social benefits may come her way. But every other person will be in the same boat and will make the same calculations, so in fact society won’t get educated at all, and so no one will benefit. That’s the perceived problem of collective action that so troubles most development experts.
But is it really that problematic? Surely not: because the poor parent also knows that there are private benefits from being educated—especially for a poor person, as precisely the development experts also argue, it’s one of the best routes out of poverty. And the child will not only be able to get a middle-class job with education but will also likely assist her parent as she gets older. So instead of the pessimistic conclusions reached by the development experts, a much more favorable outcome emerges: Because these private benefits are so great, she’ll pay fees to educate her child, even if it means sacrificing other goods. But so will many other parents, and so all will enjoy the social benefits this brings, even though they weren’t a significant part of their initial decision to educate their children.
The key points seemed to be the cost of schooling and the value of the private benefits. It is a mistake to blithely assume that the cost of schooling will be so high, and the private benefits so low, that parents will decide not to educate their children. The only way to address the issue is not in the abstract, as the UNDP and my conference critic had, but by looking at the evidence and seeing whether poor parents are actually willing to spend on education, and so produce the desired social benefits.
The evidence adduced in my research demonstrates quite categorically that poor parents are prepared to pay for schooling, for this is in fact what they are already doing. In slum areas, the vast majority of parents are prepared to pay, and are paying. It seemed to me then—and still seems now—that this evidence is enough to refute the “market failure” argument. Poor parents have shown that there is no problem of collective action and no grounds for assuming that the externalities of education will lead to market failure. The perceived private benefits are enough to make them pay for education and, hence, obtain the social benefits that arise from that decision. Furthermore, I’d found that the price paid for schooling also includes an element to cover scholarships for the poorest in society—that’s another way of looking at the fact that school owners admit up to 20 percent of their children free of charge or at a concessionary rate. So not only are parents willing to pay for private education, they are also apparently willing to subsidize the cost to others who are not as fortunate as they. Furthermore, since the quality of education in parent-funded private schools exceeds that provided by the government sector, the corollary social benefits of education would be commensurately greater as well. And because private schools are locally owned and funded—not dependent on foreign aid as are most public schools in the countries I studied—they generate self-sustaining domestic economic activity that public schools do not. Since indigenous, self-sustaining economies are the ultimate goal of developing countries, private schooling intrinsically represents a larger step forward on the path of development. Private schools, in other words, appear to be superior to government schools in the creation of public goods. All this, I believe, indicates that the second “good reason” not only fails to pass muster but in fact puts things precisely backward.
The third reason comes out of the “pro-poor” idea. Of course it arises from a well-meaning desire to ensure that no child is left behind. So state financing is the only way to provide equality in education, for if poor people must find fees for schooling, some may be unable to “use them—making it difficult to escape poverty.” Again, that all seems plausible in theory. But the same development experts who argue this seem to have no difficulty admitting that current government provision is itself inequitable, in general benefiting the wealthier in developing countries rather than the poor. Government education provision is unfair too. The key question is, could private provision be made fairer and actually turn out to be fairer than government provision?
The main reason given by the development experts as to
why it can’t be made more equitable is simply that private education requires tuition fees to be paid. The Oxfam Education Report was clear about this: Private education “does not offer a route to universal primary education, because poverty often excludes the poor from private markets.” Even though private education is “filling part of the space left as a result of the collapse of State provision,” its potential “to facilitate more rapid progress towards universal basic education has been exaggerated.” Why? Because poor parents cannot afford private education. The PROBE Report made the same objection: “Private schools are out of reach of the vast majority of poor parents.”
The issue of not everyone being able to afford tuition fees for private schools is an important one. But why would this be viewed, other things being equal, as an objection to a greater role for private education? If private schools have all the above-listed advantages over state schools, with regard to quality and accountability, why would we see the tuition fee problem as such a huge obstacle? We shouldn’t, for there is the obvious possibility of creating targeted vouchers or scholarships for the poorest, or for girls, which overcomes the objection. The UNDP seems to agree that this is a possible way forward. In a section of a recent report, “Making Private Provision Work for Poor People,” it notes: “Public funding of private schools can help in certain circumstances. . . . To ensure that children from poor families unable to pay school fees are able to attend private schools, governments could finance their education through vouchers.” It gives the example of vouchers targeted at the poor in Colombia for secondary schools that helped “expand schooling at lower cost for the government, because the only cost the government bears is the voucher.”
Similarly, the World Bank, noting the difficulties of the political “long route” to accountability, says, “Given the weaknesses in the long route of accountability, service outcomes can be improved by strengthening the short route—by increasing the client’s power over providers.” It too gives the example of targeted vouchers, which enable clients “to exert influence over providers through choice.” This will allow parents a choice of providers so that they can “vote with their feet.” “The competition created by client choice also disciplines providers. . . . Reimbursing schools based on the number of students (or female students) they enrol creates implicit competition among schools for students, increasing students’ choice.”
And The Oxfam Education Report also notes the success of two targeted voucher programs, the aforementioned in Colombia and one in Pakistan that targets the poorest and most disadvantaged, girls, enabling them to attend private schools. Surely these are positive ways forward that could embrace the choices that parents seem to want to make, and help extend them to everyone? No, for the author, they are just short-term expedients: although he agrees that “support for good-quality private providers can create equity gains,” this must be viewed as only “a transitional arrangement in countries where public education systems are failing to reach the poor.” But that is all they can be: “In terms of achieving the 2015 target of universal primary education, there is no alternative to comprehensive public provision of good-quality basic education. Private-public partnerships have a role to play in some countries, but only at the margin. They do not solve the problem of mass exclusion, and do not diminish State responsibility for providing education for all.”
Why is this position so obvious that it is the one reached by apparently all the development experts, even those who acknowledge that private schools for the poor exist, and that targeted vouchers are a possibility? It didn’t seem obvious to me in the context of the evidence I’d found around the world. Even if you are pro-poor, there didn’t seem to be any reason to accept that tuition fees are an impassable obstacle to harnessing private schools for the poor as a path to universal education. There is an obvious solution to this problem—targeted vouchers.
So the third “good reason” didn’t seem to me to be good enough either.
What about human rights? The fourth “good reason” is that education “is a fundamental human right.” Both the World Bank and the UNDP spell this out as a major objection to private education playing a role in education for all. But what role does this imply for governments, and does it rule out private education’s playing a significant role in promoting education as a human right?
Interestingly, when I looked up the academic literature on the subject, I found two versions of the rights-based commitment to education that were adopted by the international community in 2000. The second Millennium Development Goal commits governments to “ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere . . . will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.” Then there is the second goal of the Dakar Framework for Action, commonly known as the “education for all” (EFA) goal, which commits signatories (principally governments and nongovernmental organizations) to ensure “that by 2015 all children . . . have access to and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.”
Now the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, the champion of the EFA goal, is adamant that the education MDG is only “different in detail, but not in intent” from its own EFA goals. But clearly I could see there was a crucial difference. Under the MDG version, governments are only committed to ensuring that all children have access to primary schooling; it says nothing about whether it should be free. Under this goal, then, it doesn’t seem to rule out that the human right of education could be met, in full or in part, by fee-paying private schools, if everyone could obtain access to them—perhaps by providing targeted vouchers to those who could not afford fees. So the MDG version would not be an objection to private education playing an important role in providing “education for all.”
However, the Dakar Framework version is more particular. Here, the commitment is to free primary education. On the face of it— the criticism that the young woman threw at me at the Oxford conference—the EFA goal clearly provides an impossible stumbling block to private-sector involvement. If primary education must be free, then of course this rules out a large role for private education. Is that enough to make all my evidence beyond the pale? I think if we look at the motivations behind the Dakar Framework, we can see that, in intent, if not precise wording, it is not incompatible with private fee-paying education.
For UNESCO helpfully published an expanded commentary, meant to clarify any ambiguities within the framework. Here it notes that “user charges continue to be a major deterrent to poor children attending school,” and that education “must neither exclude nor discriminate.” Hence, it concludes, “Every government has the responsibility to provide free, quality basic education, so that no child will be denied access because of an inability to pay.” But this clarification surely reveals the true intentions behind “free” education: that poverty shouldn’t lead to any child being “denied access.” This is entirely different, of course, from requiring no one to pay fees. It could be perfectly compatible with this formulation of words to have fees at primary school, with the poorest being allocated targeted vouchers, as I’ve already discussed, so that they are not excluded by poverty.
This is further reinforced by UNESCO’s continued clarification as to why governments “must fulfil their obligation to offer free and compulsory primary education.” It writes: “For the millions of children living in poverty, who suffer multiple disadvantages, there must be an unequivocal commitment that education be free of tuition and other fees. . . .” Again, the commitment to free schooling seems to be for those who can’t afford even the low fees at budget private schools, not necessarily everyone. Again, targeted vouchers for the very poor to use for private schools could easily be permitted under this interpretation.
Moreover, it might again come as no surprise, given the discussion in the previous section on the range and quality of government provision, that the major reports from the UNDP and the World Bank say that, in reality, the fact that education is a human right doesn’t make much differe
nce as far as government behavior is concerned: the World Bank reports that “many governments are falling short on their obligations, especially to poor people.” The UNDP points out, very significantly, that “public provision of social services is not always the best solution when institutions are weak and accountability for the use of public resources is low—often the case in developing countries.”
So again, what education as a human right means in practice for public and private involvement in education would seem to be an open, practical matter. In practice, if governments are not living up to their promises, then it surely is an open question whether the private sector is serving the “human right” better than the states. Again, the fourth “good reason” does not seem to be too powerful an objection either.
The final “good reason” was the one put to me by the Indian delegate at the conference, who said that I was trying to pull the ladder up behind me. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen espouses this position well. Taking to task some unnamed “market enthusiasts” who recommend to developing countries “that they should rely fully on the free market even for basic education,” he says that this “rather remarkable” approach would withhold “the very process of educational expansion that was crucial in rapidly spreading literacy in Europe, North America [and] Japan . . . in the past.” It was certainly not through the market, but through the state, that educational expansion was achieved in the West, he says. And if it was good enough for the West, then it must be good enough for developing countries, too.
Amartya Sen isn’t alone in espousing this position. The World Bank also gave it as a “good reason” for the long route of accountability: “In practice no country has achieved significant improvement in . . . primary education without government involvement.” The UNDP agrees: “Only when governments intervened [in education] did these services become universal in Canada, Western Europe and the United States.”