The Role and Impact of Public-Private Partnerships in Education

International Experience 21
of students in exchange for a per pupil payment.
The contract introduces accountability
and risk-sharing between governments
and private providers in the provision of
education. More countries have subsidized
private schools or adopted voucher programs
than have experimented with contracting
out education services.
Contracting out basic education services
is part of Colombia’s strategy to increase
coverage of vulnerable populations (World
Bank 2006). Local governments are responsible
for managing and supervising these
contracts within parameters established at
the national level. The local governments
carry out a tendering process and encourage
competition by requesting proposals
from private operators. They then assign
beneficiary students to selected schools
except in Cali, where families are allowed
to select the private school of their choice,
which encourages schools to compete to
attract students (World Bank 2006).
The government of Côte d’Ivoire pays
private secondary schools a fixed amount
to educate a student under a contracting
scheme. The private schools must be certified
and meet several criteria to receive
subsidies, including meeting input specifications
and quality indicators and having
prior experience in the education market
(Sakellariou and Patrinos 2008). Uganda’s
universal secondary education policy was
introduced in 2007 to boost enrollment at
the secondary level by contracting out the
education of students that are not served
by public and government-aided schools
in exchange for fixed a per student fee.
Each party’s responsibilities are specified
in a memorandum of understanding
that requires private schools to provide
authorities with performance data on a
range of agreed indicators, to submit progress
reports, and to be subject to periodic
reviews and assessments of academic performance
(LaRocque 2008). In the province of
Punjab, Pakistan, the Foundation Assisted
Schools Program introduced vouchers to
increase enrollment and improve quality
in poor areas using accountability mechanisms
that link increases in access with
quality measures (box 2.2).
BOX 2.2
Punjab Education Foundation: Foundation Assisted Schools, Pakistan
The Punjab Education Foundation was
established in 1991 and restructured
in 2004 into an autonomous and independent
institution to promote highquality
education for the poor through
partnerships with the private sector. It is
funded by the government of the Punjab
province of Pakistan and is headed by
a 15-member, government-appointed
board of directors, the majority of whom
are from the private sector.
The Foundation Assisted Schools Program
aims to improve education quality
by taking full advantage of the capacity
of the mushrooming number of private
schools in Punjab. Approximately 33 percent
of children aged 6 to 10 who attend
school are enrolled in private schools, and
private enrollment shares are on the rise.
The program attempts to improve quality
through three fundamental components:
vouchers, teacher training, and monetary
incentives to schools for improved academic
performance.
The accountability components
include:
Requirements for Eligibility. At least
two-thirds of students have
to score at least 33 percent in
an academic test as a prerequisite
to receive vouchers. In
addition, schools have to meet
other basic school input requirements,
largely of a nonquantifiable
nature, that are evaluated by
inspectors.
A Specialized Institution to Manage
PPPs. The program is managed
by an independent institution,
the Punjab Education Foundation,
which is fully funded by the
provincial government and whose
mandate is to use public-private
Delivered
mechanisms
by The World
to increase
Bank e-library
access
to:
unknown
to and IP improve : 192.86.100.35 the quality of the
province’s Mon, 30 Mar low-cost 2009 12:16:23 private education
sector. Advantages of having
a special institution include less
bureaucratic pressure on schools
from traditional government
institutions and the potential to
introduce special management
practices in contracting.
Incentives and Sanctions Related to
Performance. The program includes
performance-based incentives
at the school and teacher levels.
Monetary awards are granted to
the school that demonstrates the
highest pass rate, and actual test
scores are taken into account.
Teachers in schools with high pass
rates are entitled to direct monetary
bonuses. If schools fail to meet
minimum academic, infrastructure,
or teaching requirements for three
consecutive years, they are banned
from the program.
Sources: World Bank staff; Punjab Education
Foundation Web site (www.pef.edu.pk).
(c) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank