News Release

December 7, 2005

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Private Schools are Reaching the World's Poor
Groundbreaking study spotlights the rise of private education in world's poorest slums

WASHINGTON - A great success story is taking place beneath the government and media's radar. Independent private schools in the slums of the poorest areas of the world are providing students with higher quality education than their public counterparts. A groundbreaking study released today by the Cato Institute documents for the first time the reach and quality of low-cost private schools in low-income areas around the developing world.

In "Private Education is Good for the Poor: A Study of Private Schools Serving the Poor in Low-Income Countries," James Tooley, professor of education policy at the University of Newcastle and director of the E. G. West Centre at the University of Newcastle, and Pauline Dixon, international research coordinator of the E. G. West Centre, argue that the private sector is meeting the educational needs of the poor far better than the state.

Using evidence from a two-year field study in India, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, Tooley and Dixon overturn widely held assumptions that private schools in slums are educationally inadequate compared to their public counterparts. Raw scores for student achievement tests show considerably higher achievement in the private than in government schools.

Teacher satisfaction and pupil attendance is higher in private schools for the poor than in government schools and comes at a lower cost. The authors show that a large majority of poor school children are enrolled in private schools and they provide some evidence that free primary education crowds out private schools but does not increase enrollment.

This study has implications for the United Nations Millennium Development goal of education for all. Because so many children are in unrecognized private schools that do not appear in official statistics, Tooley and Dixon argue that achieving universal basic education may be an easier goal to reach than is currently believed.