Education & The Private Sector = Oil & Water? Not Quite…
IEB’s posted earlier about the woeful state of education in India. On that note, Sebastian Mallaby has an interesting column in the Washington Post about changes afoot in India’s educational system, courtesy the private sector…
..the Indian school system…has experienced a huge growth in private provision. Since the early 1990s the percentage of 6-to-14-year-olds attending private school has jumped from less than a tenth to roughly a quarter of the total in that cohort, according to India’s National Council of Applied Economic Research. And this number may be on the low side. James Tooley of the University of Newcastle in Britain has found that in some Indian slums about two-thirds of the children attend private schools, many of which are not officially recognized and so may escape the attention of nationwide surveys.
The causes of this private-school explosion shed interesting light on debates about development, not just in India but throughout the poor world. The standard assumption among anti-poverty campaigners is that education leads to development; if you supply classrooms and teachers, progress will follow.
[..]
Meanwhile, the recent private-education boom in India shows how causality can also flow the other way. Education may or may not spark development, depending on whether economic conditions favor it, but development certainly can spark an educational takeoff. Since India embraced the market in the early 1990s, parents have acquired a reason to invest in education; they have seen the salaries in the go-go private sector, and they want their children to have a shot at earning them.
Hat tip: Marginal Revolution
[…] Water? Not Quite…
January 7th, 2006 by Prashant Kothari
IEB’s posted earlier about the woeful state of education in India. Sebastian Mallaby has an interesting […]
Pingback by The Indian Economy Blog » Blog Archive » Education & The Private Sector = Oil & Water? Not Quite… — January 7, 2006 @ 12:20 am
“Education may or may not spark development, depending on whether economic conditions favor it, but development certainly can spark an educational takeoff.”
I think Sebastian has the causal arrow the wrong way here. I think this should read:
“Education may or may not spark development, depending on whether DEMOGRAPHIC conditions favor it, but education certainly can spark a DEMOGRAPHIC takeoff.”
I’d like one, just one example of where mere economic policy provoked development absent the demographic transition. Just one will do.
Comment by Edward — January 7, 2006 @ 7:16 pm
Why do educated Indians living in housing societies or in campuses of education institutions not ask government to relax the law that requires a student to appear at SSC or HSC only through a Government Recognised School.
Indians emigrated to USA have singly coached their children upto University Entrance examination like SAT thanks to provison of home schooling being there in USA.
In India at secondary and higher secondary level very little teaching gts done by teachers whose salaries are being paid by the Government. Many of these teachers run coaching classes outside school hours and often force students of their classes in school where they are employed to pay for their coaching classes.
Please read more at
http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/114625/1/7589
Comment by Dayashankar Joshi — January 9, 2006 @ 4:02 pm