New revolution in educating Amaretch
Former World Bank economist and incumbent New York University professor of economics William Easterly, begins and ends his latest book The White Man’s Burden (Penguin 2006) with the heart-rending story of Amaretch, a ten-year-old Ethiopian girl whose name means ‘beautiful one’. "Driving out of Addis Ababa," he passes an "endless line of women and girls… marching… into the city". Amaretch’s day is spent collecting eucalyptus branches to sell for a pittance in the city market. She would prefer to go to school if only her parents could afford to send her. Easterly dedicates the book to her "and to the millions of children like her". "Could one of you Searchers discover a way to put a firewood-laden Ethiopan pre-teen girl named Amaretch in school?" he asks.There are ‘searchers’ — Easterly’s word for entrepreneurs of all kinds — around the developing world who are already finding the way, in places not dissimilar to where Amaretch belongs. Accepted wisdom is that children like Amaretch need billions more dollars in donor aid for public education before they can gain an education — and the poor "should be patient" (World Bank Report 2003) because public education needs to be reformed to rid it of corruption and horrendous inefficiencies before the needs of the poor can be met.
The accepted wisdom appears misguided. It ignores the fact that vast numbers of parents have already abandoned public education because of its inadequacies and lack of accountability — and are using private schools instead. This remarkable fact has huge implications for the investment community.
Recent research studies (2004-05) were piloted (by this writer for the John Templeton Foundation) investigating education for the poor in selected, officially designated poor areas of China, Ghana, India, Kenya and Nigeria. Research teams explored informal settlements — slums and shantytowns — in metropolitan cities in these countries and poor areas in the rural hinterlands surrounding the cities (periurban areas).
What the research teams found points to an education revolution that is taking place. In the poor urban and periurban areas surveyed, the vast majority of school children were found to be in ‘budget’ private schools. For instance, in the urban and periurban areas of Lagos state, Nigeria, 75 percent of school children were in private schools. In the slums of Hyderabad, 65 percent of school children are in private, unaided schools.
These budget private schools are usually established by entrepreneurs from within the poor communities themselves, employing teachers from these communities — unlike in government schools, where teachers are often brought in from the outside. The private schools charge very low fees, affordable to parents on poverty-line and minimum wages. For example in Hyderabad, mean monthly fees in class IV were Rs.78.17 ($1.74) in unrecognised private schools in the slums and Rs.102.55 in recognised ones — about 4.2 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, of the monthly wages of a breadwinner on a typical minimum wage of Rs.78 per day.
Development experts who are aware of the existence of these schools uniformly worry about their low quality. The Oxfam Education Report, for example notes that private schools for the poor are of "inferior quality," offering "low-quality service".
But current research suggests that such concerns are misplaced — at least in comparison to the quality of public education. In every setting, teacher absenteeism was lower and teacher commitment higher in private schools for the poor than in government schools. Only on one input — provision of playgrounds — was government education superior. On all other inputs — such as provision of drinking water, toilets, desks, chairs, libraries, electric fans and lighting and audio tapes for learning purposes — private schools for the poor were superior to government schools.The existence of this burgeoning and vibrant private sector provides one way in which Easterly’s Amaretch can be reached — through targeted vouchers or scholarships aimed at children like Amaretch whose parents cannot currently afford a place in private schools. Indeed, private school owners themselves are offering free or subsidised places to the poorest of the poor, including orphans.
Providing Amartech with a place in school may be one solution to this challenge. Moreover a creative new frontier for investors is dramatically revealed, one where the investment community can potentially make a huge difference to the lives of poor people. The key relevant finding of the research is that the vast majority of private schools in the poor areas are businesses, not charities, dependent more or less entirely on fee income and very importantly, making a reasonable profit.
Educating Amaretch is a solvable problem. The ‘searchers’ who have created private schools serving the poor are hungry for investment — and investors can assist them in pursuing their central role in providing quality ‘Education For All’.
(Dr. James Tooley is director of the E.G. West Centre, School of Education, University of Newcastle, UK)