PRIVATE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION

 INTRODUCTION

 “Education inherently serves both public and private interests. It addresses public interests by preparing the young to assume adult roles that promote civic responsibility, embrace a common set of economic and political values, and share a common language.

Education serves private interests in promoting individual development, understanding, and productivity that contribute to

Adult productivity and well being.”

Levin (2001)

The function of this paper is to assist those involved with educational development to address the pressing issue of greater participation by the private education sector; most particularly, the paper aims to investigate the role for private education in meeting the four main challenges that are facing education policy:

(i)                            To find sufficient places to meet current and future parental demand for education;

(ii)                         To offer a meaningful and relevant learning experience in all schools – both public and private -    which will benefit all students and also have economic and developmental significance;

(iii)                       To upgrade teaching and learning curricula, teacher qualifications and performance, physical facilities, equipment, teaching and learning materials, supervision, minimum standards, regulatory requirements, assessment, examinations etc within reasonable affordable limits in order to support the meaningful and relevant learning experience required by students;

(iv)                       To maximize the potential of all available national resources (including private sector providers) in the most cost-efficient manner in pursuit of these policy objectives. This paper argues that education can be perceived as a consumer good and that the student is the principal consumer through the parents. The key issue for the national government is to provide the best education in the most cost-effective manner. This will require the combined efforts of the public and private sectors. The public sector must decide its role in this partnership (its aims and objectives should be clear and unambiguous) and the private sector providers of education must also decide on their role and, as they are providing a public service regulated by the government, they should negotiate a supportive environment and an equitable basis for the partnership with the government. In essence the propositions that provide the framework for the approach are as follows:

(i)                            To describe possible new partnerships and an enabling environment in which responsibilities and functions for the public and private education providers are complementary;

(ii)             To suggest specific roles and responsibilities for the private sector within this new public-private partnership;

(iii)           To outline the broad parameters that need to be developed for public policy in response to this increased private education provision, particularly with regard to financial support and quality control.

Some Hurdles “There is a very clear division, certainly in academia, and beyond that in the policy arena. There seems to be a sentiment that you have to be either on the growth side or on the anti-poverty side of this debate – that it is no longer possible to straddle the two. But promoting growth doesn’t necessarily have to come at the expense of the other.”

Beddoes (2000) Over the past two decades there has been an ongoing emotive debate raging between those proponents that support the benefits of public provision against those experts that advocate the benefits of "private" or market provision (see Colcough 1996). This debate shall likely continue to rage until such time as we obtain a genuine test and an objective evaluation of public-private alternatives on a large enough scale to influence policy reform. For a number of reasons, however, this present lack of resolution is very understandable, for some of the reasons presented below.

Difficulty of Definition and Meaning Definition of Private and Public: The two means of provision - public and private - can be characterized according to the way that they are managed and financed. In their purest forms, public provision is managed directly by the government and the expenditures are met by tax revenues while in private provision revenues are derived from fees and private contributions and the providers are free to determine the type of their educational services. In fact though there are few institutions which satisfy either of these criteria. The state usually subsidizes the private sector through payment of costs incurred in curriculum development, inspection and teacher training. Conversely, in some countries schools which are nominally owned and controlled by the government receive substantial non-government funds and are subject to non-government direction. One international classification of education (OECD 1990) defined private education as that provided in institutions managed by private persons but this definition covers a wide variety of situations. Some private institutions are wholly funded by the state, others are state aided to a wide extent while others again receive no state aid at all. Further, in any one country, the situation may vary over time and according to the level or the type of education.

Even though any simple distinction between the two types masks diversity within each sector, from a policy point of view the distinction remains useful when assessing.