private-schools-full-report

The role and impact of private schools in developing countries: a rigorous review of the evidence
Headline finding:
The evidence on whether the poor are able to pay private school fees is ambiguous. Most
is neutral, some is negative but there is no positive evidence. A few studies find that a
very small minority of children of lower economic quintiles access private schools.
Financial constraints are a key factor limiting or preventing poorer households enrolling
their children in private schools. Where children of poorer households do attend private
schools, research indicates that welfare sacrifices are made and continued attendance
is difficult to sustain.
The evidence addressing the ability of economically disadvantaged groups to pay private
school fees is mixed – neutral and negative. These ambiguous findings are consequently
rated ‘weak’. Additionally, studies differ on what constitutes the ‘poor’, ‘poorest,
‘disadvantaged’ or ‘lower income’ – making it difficult to compare across them.
Neutral evidence
The evidence finds that households in the poorest quintile rarely enrol children in
private schools. In a secondary review of cross-country data, Heyneman and Stern (2013)
cite private school enrolment rates of between 10–11 percent of students from the two
lowest economic quintiles in Jamaica, and 10 percent of the poorest households in
Pakistan (data from 2007 and 2000, respectively). Baird’s (2009) nationally representative
analysis of rural and urban India indicates that unrecognised schools do, in some cases,
serve the poorest of the poor, though this is not a foregone conclusion. Akaguri (2013)
adds another cautionary note in relation to his research in rural Ghana stating that '[t]he
fact that some poor households enrol their children in LFPS is not to be taken as an
indication that they can readily afford the costs' (p.158). Kremer and Muralidharan’s
(2008) study in rural India finds that while private schools mainly cater to the better off in
rural areas, many children within them come from the more ‘disadvantaged backgrounds.
Different studies provide different (and not necessarily mutually exclusive) explanations
for affordability. One explanation is that subsidies and concessionary places enable access
for the poorest. In Kibera, Kenya, Tooley et al (2008) find evidence that not all children
enrolled in LFPs were paying fees, including orphans and children from disadvantaged
backgrounds that were given fee reductions or allowed to attend for free. In their
ethnographic study comparing private secondary schooling in two regions of Tanzania,
Phillips and Stambach (2008) raise the issue of the political economy of assisted spaces.
They find that these spaces were typically not objectively assigned under a formal system
of rules, but rather, tended to be allocated to children of families known to the school.
The study observed local people deployed different strategies to cultivate their prospects
for receiving financial assistance, including by increasing church attendance, or hiding
their true income from community members so as not to undermine their worthiness for
financial assistance.
Counter evidence
Limited affordability is nevertheless a constraint on access, as indicated by studies that
find a mismatch between school preference and actual enrolment. In Singh and Sarkar’s
(2012) study in Andhra Pradesh, parents with children in government schools expressed
helplessness in not being able to afford to send their children to private schools, which
continued to serve the large majority of economically marginalised children 14 . Schirmer
(2010) concludes similarly for South Africa. Likewise Härmä (2011) finds that despite a
14 Over 70 percent of the students enrolled in government schools belonged to households from the
bottom two quartiles.
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