Education Report: Private Schools for Public Goods
The Jacobs foundation commissioned L.E.K consulting to produce a recently released report on what are the key challenges in Global Education and the state of the privately run schools sector.
The report does not reflect what affect COVID will have on some of the progress made in recent years, but it provides solid insights into some of the initiatives and good work done by many stakeholders trying to improve the quality and access of Education globally.
Key takeaways
- Definitions: Reminder that “Private Schools” and “Privately run schools”are not just for the well off, but include those schools run not for profit by companies, religious organizations and families. They play an increasing role in providing basic K-12 education in India.
- There are still some 262m out-of-school children globally.
- Privately run schools service circa 25% of children in schools globally and is growing in emerging markets such as India, Malaysia and Brazil.
- The three most critical challenges affecting global education:
Access — Access for marginalized children
Quality and relevance — lack of quality talent, infrastructure & ecosystem
Accountability — by those responsible
The report addresses some case studies that show how various groups have innovated to fill the gap: (i) Whole school delivery (i.e. free or affordable quality education), (ii) Updating curriculum and pedagogy, (iii) Professional development for teachers/educators, (iv) Teacher/student management and governance and (v) Leveraging technology.
The authors propose three conclusions for fostering more inclusiveness of private/privately run schools to contribute:
- Requirement for a supportive regulatory environment
- An effective quality assurance regime
- PPP framework
Other interesting discussion points: is Education a public good? / global challenges / role & characteristics of Private K-12 (great chart on p.28) and generally drilling down into the above takeaways.
Case studies on Alianza Educativa (Colombia), Bridge intl (Nigeria), EducAid (Sierra Leone), Eton college (U.K), KIPP (U.S), Muktangan (India), Rising Academy Network (Liberia) and The Citizens Foundation (TCF/Pakistan)
(Link to the report landing page below)
