Private Primary Schools

Abstract

Over the past two decades, private primary schools have become one of the most contentious topics of research in the field of international education. In particular, “low-cost” or “low-fee” private primary schools has received a lot of attention. The crux of the issue can be described in terms of access and quality. The promise of the private sector is that it could provide a higher-quality alternative to public education, and one that might be more cost-effective. The threat of the private sector is that it might deepen educational inequality, providing access to quality education for only some children and potentially making education worse for others. This chapter reviews some of the research on the subject and then analyzes transfer to private primary schools, comparing the educational experience of children in these schools with that of children in the government schools from which they transferred. Analysis accordingly aligns with questions of access (what predicts transfer to private school) and quality (what differences (or similarities) exist between government and private primary schools).