Public-Private Partnership: what are the advantages for education?

Responsible researcher: Pedro Jorge Holanda Alves

Article title: DELIVERING EDUCATION TO THE UNDERSERVED THROUGH A PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM IN PAKISTAN

Article authors: Felipe Barrera-Osorio; David S. Blakeslee; Matthew Hoover; Leigh Linden;

Intervention Location: Sindh, Pakistan

Sample Size: 199 villages (2,089 families and 5,556 children aged 5 to 9 for the baseline survey and 5,966 families and 17,720 children aged 5 to 17 for the follow-up survey)

Big theme: Education.

Type of Intervention: Subsidy for enrollment in private schools for needy children

Variable of Main Interest: Student enrollment and performance

Evaluation Method: Experimental evaluation (RCT)

Policy Problem

In Pakistan, the educational level is below what is desired, as is the number of children enrolled, even in comparison to countries with similar income levels. Despite this fact, in the period between the 1980s and 2005, the country showed a high growth in the construction of private schools, going from 4,000 units to 47,000. Furthermore, it is also observed that much of this expansion occurred in poorer villages and urban neighborhoods (ANDRABI, DAS AND KHWAJA, 2008).

Assessment Context

In order to obtain better school results and realizing the high growth of private schools, the provincial government of Pakistan decided to create the Low-Cost Private School Promotion Program in Rural Sindh (PPRS), a public-private partnership program, whose objective is to subsidize free attendance for students belonging to needy families, in some private schools located in villages in the province of Sindh.

The main objective of the program is to increase access to education in marginalized areas by convincing families in that region to enroll their children in schools. This is expected to ensure better living conditions in the future. The program also aims to reduce the gender gap by offering a greater subsidy for the enrollment of female children.

Intervention Details

The program defined that schools would receive a subsidy for each student enrolled, distinguishing the amounts between boys and girls (approximately U$5 dollars [CR1] per student and U$6 ​​dollars for each female student, in 2008 values). In order to ensure the success of the initiative, the government carried out periodic monitoring, without prior notice, at schools participating in the program. Based on the inspection and monitoring implemented, the government began to effectively verify the destination of the resources provided through subsidies, in order to guarantee the school attendance of the students covered, as well as the proper provision of contracted private school services.

Thus, Barrera et. Al (2017) carried out research to evaluate how the PPRS affects the decision to include these children in schools and their performance in language and mathematics tests. Furthermore, the authors also tried to evaluate the behavior of the people who manage the schools and what the families benefiting from the program expect from their children in the future. To ensure that the study can well represent the reality of the region, the authors selected the schools randomly.

Assessment Method  

The program was designed and administered by the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), a semi-autonomous organization whose objective is to undertake educational initiatives aimed at less developed areas and marginalized populations in the province of Sindh. To select the program, the SEF used as selection criteria the size of the out-of-school child population, the gender gap in school enrollment and the percentage of families located at least 15 minutes from the nearest primary school.

The first phase of the program (which is the object of the authors' study) was implemented in 8 of the province's 23 districts, which were characterized by the poorest localities and without concern for law and order. Of these districts, 199 of the 263 villages in selected districts, which had low educational results in the province, were qualified. From these villages, 2,089 families and 5,556 children, ages 5 to 9, were interviewed for the baseline survey, while 5,966 families and 17,720 children, ages 5 to 17, were interviewed for the follow-up survey.

The evaluation sample selected 82 villages in which the subsidy would be equal for both genders, 79 villages in which the subsidy would be greater for girls, and 38 villages in which there would be no subsidy at all. The separation of these groups is necessary to verify the impact of the program in the Sindh region (the villages that received both types of subsidies represent the two treatment groups and the villages that did not receive subsidies form the control group). The analysis of this policy is important both to evaluate the possibility of expanding the local program and to serve as an example to be followed by similar regions.

The selection of schools was established in mid-2009 and a follow-up survey was carried out in the second half of 2011. This survey consisted of questionnaires with village leaders, a school survey of all schools in the general neighborhood and a survey home, which randomly selected 12 of 75 families who agreed to send their children to the proposed program school.

Results

The results show that the program appears to have been highly effective. In general, in terms of school enrollment, the program managed to increase, respectively, by 30 and 12 percentage points the number of enrollments of children between 6 and 10 years old and 11 and 17 years old - that is, if the school had 1000 students aged 6 After 10 years of enrollment, the program increased, on average, the number of enrolled students by 300 students. When the authors deal with the subsidy differentiating gender (which aimed to generate greater incentives for girls) the result shows that the impact is similar in relation to the subsidy without differentiation, showing that the program was not able to reduce gender differences in school enrollment.

The program also appears to have a positive impact on grades, increasing the performance of all students who took the tests by a score of 0.63 points. For children benefiting from the program, the results show an increase of 2 points compared to other students. Compared to public school students, children in the program performed better than public school students, scoring 0.16 points higher on standardized tests, despite having poorer socioeconomic backgrounds. When comparing grades by gender, the authors also found no differences in test performance.

Furthermore, families participating in the program become more optimistic, so that they are more likely to express aspirations for their children to become doctors and engineers, exceeding initial expectations. In other words, these families felt more hopeful that boys and girls would reach higher levels of education and, in the future, become something different from what represented their reality. It is also worth noting that some characteristics, such as female teachers, were small in the region and the expectation that program participants could increase the training of this profession could also generate a benefit for the villages in general.

Politics Lessons

In general analysis, the program appears to have good results when the government provides adequate support, which demonstrates that government assistance guarantees enormous potential for local politicians to find appropriate solutions to the challenges encountered. It is also important to highlight the good measures adopted by the social planner, who chooses the teachers who best suit the class's gender, hires more qualified teachers and ensures bathrooms or drinking water in schools. That said, it is important to highlight that, for the success of the program, all agents involved must contribute, that is, the government, the companies that manage the schools and families.

Reference BARRERA-OSORIO, Felipe et al. Delivering education to the underserved through a public-private partnership program in Pakistan. The World Bank, 2017.

 [CR1] Is this the monthly fee at schools? Do families earn the money and use it to pay school fees? And that? Or the money goes straight to. School?