India : Do Kids in Private Schools Learn More?
Primary school education is a basic building block for children’s development, preparing them for success later in life. But in many countries, poor children often don’t finish school even if it’s available to them. Those who do stay in school may...
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/212491467743485926/India-Do-kids-in-private-schools-learn-more http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28225 |
| Summary: | Primary school education is a basic
building block for children’s development, preparing them
for success later in life. But in many countries, poor
children often don’t finish school even if it’s available to
them. Those who do stay in school may not learn much. The
quality of education can be so low that children end up
completing primary school without learning to read or do
basic math. Concerns that the program would have a negative
effect on fee-paying students proved unfounded. Similarly,
concerns that voucher students wouldn’t be able to keep up
with the work also proved unfounded. It turned out that the
low-cost private schools were more productive than the
government schools in terms of offering more classes and
teaching core subjects in shorter periods of time, despite
hiring less experienced teachers and paying them less than
government school teachers. As the evaluation shows,
vouchers don’t hurt students, neither those who receive
them, nor those who are their new or old classmates, which
means they can be an effective tool for expanding access
across socio-economic lines and giving poor children the
opportunity to be exposed to the variety of classes the
private schools offer. Nevertheless, such programs require
careful attention to design to deliver high-quality
education to all children in an inclusive and equitable
manner. A key open question for education policy in
low-income setting is to study the extent to which private
schools that have the same level of spending per child as
government schools can improve learning outcomes without
selectively admitting students. |
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