The private schooling phenomenon in India: A review

Geeta Kingdon

No 17-06, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: This paper examines the size, growth, salaries, per-pupil-costs, pupil achievement levels and cost-effectiveness of private schools, and compares these with the government school sector. Official data show a steep growth of private schooling and a corresponding rapid shrinkage in the size of the government school sector in India, suggesting parental abandonment of government schools. Data show that a very large majority of private schools in most states are 'low-fee' when judged in relation to: state per capita income, per-pupil expenditure in the government schools, and the officially-stipulated rural minimum wage rate for daily-wage-labour. This suggests that affordability is an important factor behind the migration towards and growth of private schools. The main reason for the very low fee levels in private schools is their lower teacher salaries, which the data show to be a small fraction of the salaries paid in government schools; this is possible because private schools pay the market-clearing wage, which is depressed by a large supply of unemployed graduates in the country, whereas government schools pay bureaucratically determined minimum-wages. Private schools' substantially lower per-student-cost combined with their students' modestly higher learning achievement levels, means that they are significantly more cost-effective than government schools. The paper shows how education policies relating to private schools are harmful when formulated without seeking the evidence.

Keywords: Private schooling; learning achievement; value for money; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.ucl.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp1706.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The private schooling phenomenon in India: A review (2017)
Working Paper: The Private Schooling Phenomenon in India: A Review (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1706

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London Quantitative Social Science, Social Research Institute, 55-59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NU. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr Neus Bover Fonts ().