In 2012, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found that, in rural India, the number of children in the age group of 6-14 years attending private schools was 28%. In fact, the percentage of children attending private schools has been on the rise over the past few years, and between 2009 and 2012, this number increased by 6 percentage points.[1] This shift in the form of schooling was visible while conducting the second round of the PAISA District Studies surveys in Rajasthan recently. In many of the government schools that I visited, the enrollment of children was dropping significantly, particularly if the school was close to an urban area. For example, in Jaipur, I came across some schools where the enrollment had reduced by more than half in the past two years. The teachers at one such school felt that a lot of the parents are choosing to send their children to private schools as they believe these schools can provide better education. Some of the government school teachers even agreed with the parents and said that public school teachers are so bound by meetings and accounting for funds that the learning process is being left behind. So what does the literature say about private schooling in India? Are there discernible differences between public and private schools and the learning they can impart? Also, are the students supplementing their schooling in any way, and if they are, what are the benefits?

The literature on private schooling in India provides us with some insights into the differences between public and private schools. One of the pioneering studies on this subject was undertaken by James Tooley in Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) between 2003 and 2005.[2] The schools studied were found to be providing good quality education in the English medium, at costs which were affordable to the poorest of families. These schools were run with minimum resources and teachers were hired on contracts which paid them a much lower salary compared to government school teachers. This helped the private schools reduce their input cost greatly, thereby keeping the fees low. Karthik Muralidharan and Michael Kremer (2008)[3] in a survey on rural schools in India find that, on average, private school teachers are present in schools more often and are more likely to be engaged in teaching activities. They also find that children in private schools have higher attendance and better test scores, and the latter holds even after keeping village and household characteristics constant. Similar results are also reflected in works by French and Kingdon (2010),[4] and Goyal and Pandey (2009).[5] There are a number of studies which have tried to dissociate this private effect from inherent selection biases that may exist for these schools. Tabarrok (2012)[6] introduces a test of ‘Cream Skimming’ to be able to control for whether better students are going to private schools, thereby causing the private effect. ‘Cream skimming’ is a phenomenon where the private schools are able to attract better students out of the population. Using district wise estimates, he finds that the effect of private schooling does not reduce greatly even when 70% of students are in private schools. He also finds that mean scores over the whole population increase with increase in proportion of private schools. Both these results suggest that there is a positive effect associated with private schools, over and above the “Cream Skimming”.

Despite these apparent advantages, private schooling also has its fair share of problems. Goyal and Pandey (2009) find that the overall quality of education is low in both private and public schools, and learning gains are limited from one grade to the next. Furthermore, there are some studies which suggest that this private school effect may still be driven by selection factors. Chugdar (2009)[7] finds that the private school advantage varies based on the village context and that private schools are more likely to be present in those villages which have a strong government setup. However the advantage offered by these schools in such villages tends to be lower. The author speculates that this is because the government schools in these villages tend to perform better either due to competition from the private schools or by leveraging better the government setup. In another paper, Chugdar and Quin (2011)[8] use a technique called propensity score matching to equate children and then gauge whether there is a difference in test scores between those going to private schools and those going to public schools. They find this difference to be statistically insignificant; they also formulate “low-fee” private schools based on the data and suggest that there may be no difference in the test scores of those going to the low fee private schools and those going to public schools.

From the above, it can be gauged that the literature on private schooling seems to be mixed: there is general agreement that private school students perform better in terms of learning, though even this learning does not appear to be ideal. However, whether these scores suffer from an inherent selection bias and whether we see a private effect if all other factors were equal remains up for debate.

Another way in which these children are interacting with the private market is through private tuitions (external help beyond the classroom). According to ASER data, the percentage of children in rural India taking paid tuition classes has remained around 23-24% between 2009 and 2012. Interestingly, if we look at table given in Wadhwa and Banerjee (2012)[9] (reproduced in Table 1 below) and compare students who attend government schools and take tuition with those who attend private schools and don’t take tuition, we find that the percentage of children in class 5 who can read a class 2 level text is very similar. Could it be that tuitions are making up for the learning which is being missed out in government schools but available in private schools? Exploring this question is outside the scope of this blog, but it takes me back to the point made by teachers in Rajasthan about the lack of teaching in government schools: is it possible that the learning aspect which is being lost in government schools is being supplemented by tuitions, thereby making it equivalent to private school learning?

Table 1: Class V Children who can Read Class II level text (in per cent)

Another interesting and related point is that the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) data gives us the private expenditure for these two set of students: the expenditure on children who go to private schools and don’t take tuition and those who go to government schools and also take tuition. As we can see from the table below, the costs for the government school students (with tuition) are much lower compared those in private schools (without tuition), even though these two sets have similar learning outcomes. Of course, there can be inherent selection biases regarding tuition as well but it would be interesting to explore what effect tuition has on private and public school students, what are the characteristics of the children and households which access this tuition and what is the structure of these tuition classes which facilitate learning.

Table 2: Private expenditure on Education (in Rs.) (According to IHDS 2004-05 dataset)[10]

[1] ASER 2009 and ASER 2012 reports available at http://www.asercentre.org/p/51.html?p=61

[2] Tooley, J. 2009. The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey into how the World’s Poorest People are Educating Themselves. New Delhi: Penguin.

[3] Muralidharan, K., and M. Kremer.  2008.“Public and Private Schools in Rural India,” available at http://econ.ucsd.edu/~kamurali/papers/Published%20Edited%20Volume%20Chapters/Public%20and%20private%20schools%20in%20rural%20india%20%28Final%20Pre-Publication%29.pdf

[4] French, R., and G. Kingdon.  2010. “The relative effectiveness of Private and Government schools in Rural India: Evidence from ASER data”. Available at http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp1003.pdf

[5] Goyal,  S.,  &  Pandey,  P.  2009.  How do  government  and  private  schools  differ? Findings  from  two  large  Indian  states.  Report  No.  30,  South  Asia  Human Development  Sector.  Washington.  DC:  The  World  Bank. Available at http://ddp-ext.worldbank.org/EdStats/INDwp09b.pdf

[6] Tabbarrok, A.  2011. Private education in India: A novel test of cream skimming. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7287.2011.00286.x/abstract

[7] Chudgar, A. 2012. “Variation in Private School Performance: The importance of Village context”, Economic and Political Weekly. 12 March, XLVII

[8] Chudgar, A., & E. Quin. 2012. “Relationship  between  private  schooling  and  achievement:  Results

from  rural  and  urban  India”, Economics  of  Education  Review  31 (2012)

[9] Banerji, R, & W. Wadhwa. “Every Child in School and Learning Well in India”. Available at www.idfc.com/pdf/report/2012/Chapter_5.pdf

[10] In this table, private schools are defined as Private unaided schools. Even when we look at the learning levels in the IHDS dataset (which are measured for Children between ages 8 and 11 years), we find that the uncontrolled mean level of learning for those in government schools who take tuition and those in private schools who don’t are nearly equal.