Education | World

Public or Private Education: A Pragmatic View

The following article was sent in as an email comment by Natasha Posarac, a friend currently working at the World Food Programme in Rome.

As a child of communism I am, of course, “in favour” of public education but really don’t know much about it in other countries. In Serbia, “private” (relating to universities only) education is for people who couldn’t get into a state university (which is free) and then they basically pay for a place in one of the private schools. I hear it is similar in Spain, with some business school exceptions. Quite a different story in Anglo-Saxon countries, no?

Therefore seems to me there is no inherently better model – a well-regulated private school system with guaranteed access to all students, guaranteed area coverage and strict and uniform learning standards can be equally good as a well-funded public system with activist parents and “correctly” set incentives for the teachers and administrators. The devil is in the details, as always.

In a country like India where inequality is accepted and status comes from family or group membership and personal wealth, the incentives for underpaid teachers to teach and parents in poor areas to demand school facilities from governments are small (all groups know they are not likely to get any satisfaction).

In China (if it’s anything like my communist education), status as a teacher is reward in itself and government should at least be seen to provide equal (if not always good) facilities for all students.

In countries with failed governments (or failed governance of areas such as slums) it seems to me there are some but not all incentives contributing to private education - for example activist parents send their children to school, aid organization gives money for teachers, WFP provides school meals for children and take-home rations to make it affordable to attend….the question is really would direct donor budgetary support to government’s education budget, together with a change management effort espousing the value of universal education produce the same or better educational result for the world’s children?

I would say yes. If the government doesn’t divert the money, if the politicians don’t steal it, if the slum children are counted and provided with facilities as other children, if the family manages to eat without child labour….if….all ifs that are not satisfied in probably 80% of this world. Thus people try to do the best they can with what they have and haphazard aid efforts help them in some cases - then we point to them as successes. But should it be a model? I don’t think so.

Universal free public education has only existed for a couple of hundred years in the developed world, and just because it does not yet in the developing world (or undeveloped or underdeveloped or whatever) it should not be given up on as a value.

However, it is clear that I or anybody else in the top 10% of the world’s privileged people can not expect reality to confirm to our values…yet. It is the same problem with food aid - yes maybe it creates dependence in the long term and stifles productivity and self-sufficiency. But when people are hungry what do you say? No food aid, here are some seeds to plant as the new policy is that you should be self-sufficient in the medium to long-term horizon. Until then….die?

So to summarize - yes to both public and private, whatever works in the place but public education, like public health is better as the conditions for a well functioning private market are not met in these areas - there are information failures and social benefits are greater than private benefits - therefore a clear THEORETICAL case for public.

Interesting indeed…ok, am going back to the issue of rising food prices - why don’t you do something on that?

© 2008 The Discomfort Zone.