I am sure you are all committed to a human rights-based approach, and you even write it. I was suggesting however that, before even discussing the empirical evidence about the respective merits in practice of private and public schools, human rights gives a number of parameters that could narrow down the number of “acceptable” options that can be taken to address the education crisis. Some of these parameters include (but are not limited to):

- First, human rights law requires that States play a central role in providing education at all levels. Doing so, it, at least, clearly rules out the extreme possibility to have a fully private education system (though I understand none of you is suggesting this, it may be useful to remind it), and it requires that when private education exists, it is strictly regulated. So, in any case, there NEEDS to be a functioning state in order to fulfil human rights standards: whether it is to directly provide education or regulate private schools, there is no way to not have the State playing a key role. Even in cases where private education is developed, a State is needed – and so the argument according to which private education is a solution to the failure of the State is just wrong: we’ll need a functioning State anyway. Some may argue that it may even be more burdensome/difficult to regulate private schools than to create or manage an accountable public schooling system. In my view, when the State is failing (i.e. public schools are failing), going around the issue by privatising what is not working is not an option that is in line with human rights.

- Second, human rights law shifts the thinking about responsibility. It clearly indicates that when the state – and so, public schools – is failing, a) people who are responsible for this failing should be held accountable and b) this should be fixed, and the State has to take all the necessary measures – including through taxation, request for development aid, criminal and other measures against corruption, etc – to fix it. So there is no fatality in a State failing, and no excuse to accept it.

- Third, human rights law requires that quality primary education be made free and compulsory to all, and secondary education be progressively made free (with no step back allowed, except in exceptional circumstances). Generally, education should also be non-discriminatory on various grounds, including income and social origin. I am still unclear whether private education models can this criterion, even using vouchers.

One must be clear: human rights is not a magic bullet and does not provide answers to many of the questions raised, such as HOW TO address the failure of governments to provide responsive and accountable school systems. However, it does give guidance as to what options should be taken to address education issues, and, as a minimum, it rule out some options (and it still needs to be discussed whether some options are even prescribed in certain cases). And I think that some of the options that are ruled out, on the basis of the human rights treaties States consensually signed up to, include some (or perhaps most) of the options suggested by Justin.

Said differently, I think that human rights back up many of your points Kevin, from a different perspective: the points of view of what it binding on States and of the universal agreement that those States made about what education should be like.

Best regards,
Sylvain

I’m not surprised that you find better performance for private schools, even more so because the dataset you have cannot distinguish between more elite high-fee private schools and low-fee ones that have been primarily the subject of this debate (as you indicate in our twitter debate, we don’t know if the latter are subsumed in amongst the results for public schools or private ones – but either way, we can’t identify them).

The problem with this is further exemplified by your analysis of private school fees in the second part of the paper from a different dataset which shows per primary school pupil fees were a median of $40.87 and a mean of $110.00 per year. Ie there is a wide variation in private schools but you are unable to disentangle this through the KCPE dataset (and really need to be careful about juxtaposing the 2 datasets, as you do in figure 1). There are a few other things too, but I won’t go on further for now.

This is not to say that the paper doesn’t have merits, but need to be careful about drawing policy conclusions from it for low-fee private schools.

Many thanks to both you and Kevin for a stimulating debate, and to Duncan for hosting it. It has certainly given food for thought on an important issue.

The trouble with one of the arguments in this thread – that donors are pushing hard and creating markets where no markets exist – is that it assumes we are working from a blank slate of nature. But these low-cost private schools do exist in places like Nigeria, Pakistan, and India etc. While not advocating for a one-size-fits-all approach to education governance, a little bit of competition doesn’t do any harm, and the state system will have every incentive to reform. This applies vice versa to the low-cost private market, which is also shambolic in many places.

You could argue, of coarse, from a theoretical point of view, if the markets exists, leave them alone, they’ll grow into beautiful trees, to borrow James Tooley’s phrase, without any help. That is, after all, how perfect markets operate….

The trouble with places like Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia, where I now work, is that these are high-population countries where the education deficit is a national emergency, and these days, national emergencies impact across borders, so for the sake of all of us, kids need to be educated and educated well, to give them a stake in the future. I strongly, and firmly believe in a good, effective public system, but I also believe in giving parents choice, but the choice has to be an honest one. We cannot say there is a choice if we undermine the state system, and create new markets. No, this is a false choice. Real choice exists when the public system is funded, but more importantly, governed well, so that parents make a choice between equal providers, not unequal ones.

Finally, I’d put the vote to the British taxpayers (or similar taxpayers elsewhere). If we cannot agree whether this is all about ideology, not evidence, just ask the taxpayer what they want to see done with their money. Is this too populist to handle?

If this were Twitter there’d be a disclaimer, saying most of these views are my Mum’s.

Thanks for a fun debate — and thanks, as you said, to Duncan for setting this up. The exchange has surpassed my expectations for evidence-based policy discussion in the blogosphere.

I would obviously quibble with your reading of my work on Kenyan private schools, but as Duncan notes, I’ve written too much already. Will leave anyone who’s still curious to read the paper. http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1425807

Since I kicked this off with a reference to Pakistan, I appreciated your summary on that front.

“In Pakistan, state failure in education is so pervasive and low-fee private schools are so prevalent, that there are obvious efficiency and equity gains from ‘buying-in’ delivery while fixing the underlying failure.  Every situation is different. And governments and donors need to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of the non-state delivery options available.”

Agreed. And I look forward to continuing to debate those relative strengths and weaknesses as more evidence comes in.

Ruth – I feel torn on the quota system, and may have over-stated my case. My concern is that high fee private schools are giving chidlren from the wealthiest households priviliged access to high quality state-funded secondary education. As you know, the national schools heavily out-perform provincial and district schools. However, I agree that affirmative action does not work as a stand-alone strategy. It strikes me that in both Kenya and India, the other country that Justin mentions, governments have introduced affirmative action as a populist measures, rather than as part of an integrated strategy aimed at equalizing opportunity.

Sylvain: I think we all share a right-based framework. The debate is ultimately about how the enact the progressive realization of the right to education. You highlight the financing issue – and money clearly matters. However, one of the the things eroding the right to eduaction is the failure of governments to provide responsive and accountable school systems.
David: The theory of change issue is critical. Duncan has written about this in some detail. The shocking state of public education in many countries reflects the weaknes of political coalitions for achieving change. In most of the countries that we are considering, the middle class has basically exited public education, weakening the political impetus for reform. At risk of alienating friends in the NGO community, I also believe that development campaigners have done a pretty bad job as advocates for education for all – and UN leadership has been poor

Thanks for putting in place this fascinating debate. Aside from being quite interesting to some of us who don’t focus one education, it’s also a prime example of your blog’s general contention that lots of development needs reflect a simple failure of the state to be accountable to its broad public, and the real pathway to change must involve empowering people to own their futures.

A couple of points that do come out clearly:
* Kevin is focused on broad, long-term change, emphasizing this more than short- to medium-term fixes. It is not clear how the model of private school performance fits into this perspective; there are references to being a laboratory but the types of innovations found or the pathways to scale those up are uncertain.
* Kevin also seems concerned that Justin’s means to greater achievement, because it leverages private schools that reduce teacher salaries, will undercut broader incentives for further generations of teachers and so will be an impediment to longer-term solutions.
* Justin values use of private schools because they outperform public schools at cost. While the evidence seems sketchy, it is not clear from his presentation, even if this is true, why it would be expected to remain true if use of private schools was broadened nationally.

At the end of the day, what I find missing from the debate is not evidence, but is the “theory of change” from each side. The crux question seems to be whether private schools can sustainably continue to outperform public schools, in developing countries. Why should we expect this, or not, and what would we measure to check?

With more clarity on this TOC, it would be much easier to sift the evidence. It’s not just how private schools have performed, but which aspects of that performance seem to represent a real difference from how the state mis-provides public education now, and would persist if the state shifted to supporting private schools for public purposes on a wide scale. And frankly, I don’t know which parts of the evidence really bear on that question yet.

Anyway, great to see these discussions in the development sphere, it’s very valuable!

Many thanks for your fascinating debate. Just a few personal thoughts, from the Right to Education Project’s perspective: you mention human rights a few times, but have you looked into the potential for human rights law to give a basis for reflecting about the issue of privatisation in education?

Human rights standards have been almost universally signed up to and therefore legally binding in most countries around the world. Though human rights may, in some respect, be “ideological” – i.e., they defend a particular point of view – the level of international support and consensus they enjoy allows to think that they can constitute a good basis to make a judgement.

And human rights are quite clear about the role States should play in education: while he liberty of parents and guardians to choose
other than public schools for their children and the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions is clearly guaranteed, States that have ratified international conventions also agree that it is their principal responsibility to ensure the direct provision of the right to education in most circumstances (http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G99/462/16/PDF/G9946216.pdf?OpenElement).

And a more practical argument: whenever private schools exist, they must conform to minimum educational standard, not be discriminatory, as well as respect a few other standards the state must closely monitor. A key question there is to know whether it is cost-effective for a state to spend resources into closely monitoring a vast network of private schools, rather than doing it itself.

A last comment, about public education failing: there is no discussion that public schools are not working well in many parts of the world. But when that happens, this not only a regrettable fact,it is also in most cases a violation of international human rights law, a violation of the rights of the children that ought to benefit from free quality education. How does this help? Well, it reinforces the claim that was made: when public education is failing, it needs to be fixed. This is not only a moral obligation, this is also a legal duty to which most states have signed up. And when resources are missing to pay for more teachers or trainings, one should remember that all states (including developing countries) have a legal obligation to spend the maximum of their available resources towards the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights (including education), and developed states have a duty to provide assistance to developing countries in good faith.

Besides the endless discussion on the empirical evidence as to whether public or private schools are more efficient, it might be that very simply, States have to promote public education because it is a legal duty they consensually signed up to. Up to them to give themselves the means to achieve their commitments; it’s possible.

Best
Sylvain

Watkins. First of all I just want to say thank you for this brilliant piece that didn’t just address the issues and present facts, but that also was very personal, at least for me. I couldn’t agree more with you even if I wanted to.

I just want to address the quota issue that both you and Justin have brought up. I’m glad this issue has been addressed because I am of the opinion that if there is a anything that exemplifies the failure of the govt. to ensure that the public education system is working then it is this.

“As you know, entry to National schools, which are public, has traditionally been dominated by pupils from high-cost private schools.”

True, but to say traditionally is not really accurate. In my response to Justin’s first blog post, I mentioned that up until my time, the generation of my siblings who are older all went to public primary schools and then proceeded on to public secondary schools. During their time it was next to impossible for students in private primary schools to dominate public secondary schools.

The reasons being that for one, who needed private schools, apart from the ultra-rich who mostly took their children to schools teaching the GCSE system and those private schools that were relatively priced, were not big enough and so even when the students from the schools proceeded on to public secondary schools, with their small numbers, it was hardly considered a threat to the thousands of students from public schools.

I don’t want to repeat it but we have seen that most parents who take their children to private schools are trying to get the kind of quality that has been missing in the public system for the last 10yrs.

To get to my point, I have a lot of reservations about the controversial quota system that was introduced 2 years ago. While I understand clearly the intentions behind it, the truth is that I can bet my very broke bank account on it that it will NOT remedy the situation but rather become a huge polarizing point in Kenya’s education system and also give this pathetically lazy and corrupt government more excuses not to get its act together with regards to fixing the rot in the public education system.

Affirmative action is a brilliant tool to ensure equity in needed situations but it is dangerous to use it in isolation. Affirmative action should never be used alone and I speak with a lot of boldness having been active in the discussions of the same with regards to Kenya’s constitution and affirmative action for women in the political space.

Unfortunately there is just one little thing missing, the fact that affirmative action is a treatment for the symptoms and not the cause and should be used even as urgent measures are taken to rectify the root of the problem.

So yes, students from private schools who in as much as have been privileged to get better quality, have undoubtedly worked hard all the same to get good marks in their exams. But does killing their dream to join the best public schools in the country improve the quality of education in the public system? Does this boost the morale of the teachers in the public system, does it build much needed infrastructure in the same schools, does it put books and pens on the desks of the students and that is if the desks even exist in the first place and finally does it make the government more transparent and accountable with regards to funds meant for the public schools? NO NO NO NO!!

Since the quota system was introduced, nothing has changed with regards to improving quality. Teachers in the public system went on strike for 2 weeks last year in September. They almost went on strike in May of this year because the Treasury had not disbursed funds needed to keep the schools running and headteachers and teachers were being forced to use their own money to keep the schools running. You should also know that the teachers have promised to go on strike in September and it looks like this will be a serious show-down.

A quota system in not a magic wand.It shouldn’t be in a country like mine where students in private schools have a 4a.m-11p.m school working day. Parents in this country are desperate to get their children some sort of quality and many have sacrificed a lot to take them to private schools and it is heart-breaking for them when their children cannot attend good secondary schools.

I want reforms and reform does not mean ‘punishing’ one group that was forced by the inadequacies of the government to seek an alternative so that the group that was unable to get the alternative (mostly because of financial constraints) can benefit. When you honestly look at both sides of the coin, children in both systems and their parents have gotten an absolute raw deal from the government.

How to get the balance is the problem. The leadership in Kenya is not visionary enough to use the quota system wisely so that children that attend both private and public schools benefit and so I would be very skeptical at calling it a success.

The truth is that a quota system is on place simply because the government has failed miserably in providing quality and ensuring that students can compete fairly for the positions available. I am desperate for reforms in the public sector, honestly I am and I just hope that they come sooner than later.

P/S: Thanks Duncan for giving us all this opportunity and especially to Watkins and Justin