How Do Government and Private Schools Differ? Findings from Two Large Indian States
This paper uses survey data from representative samples of government and private schools in two states of India, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, to explore systematic differences between the two school types. The authors find that private school...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2009/12/11629796/government-private-schools-differ-findings-two-large-indian-states http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17962 |
| Summary: | This paper uses survey data from
representative samples of government and private schools in
two states of India, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, to
explore systematic differences between the two school types.
The authors find that private school students have higher
test scores than government school students. However, in
both private and government schools the overall quality is
low and learning gains from one grade to the next are small.
There is large variation in the quality of both school
types; and observed school and teacher characteristics are
weakly correlated with learning outcomes. There is
considerable sorting among students, and those from higher
socio-economic strata select into private schools. Private
schools have lower pupil-teacher ratios and seven to eight
times' lower teacher salaries but do not differ
systematically in infrastructure and teacher effort from
government schools. Most of the variation in teacher effort
is within schools and is weakly correlated with observed
teacher characteristics such as education, training, and
experience. After controlling for observed student and
school characteristics, the private school advantage over
government schools in test scores varies by state, school
type and grade. Private unrecognized schools do better than
private recognized schools. Given the large salary
differential, private schools would clearly be more cost
effective even in the case of no absolute difference in test scores. |
|---|