IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecaffa/v27y2007i2p37-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Educating Amaretch: Private Schools For The Poor And The New Frontier For Investors

Author

Listed:
  • James Tooley

Abstract

The accepted wisdom says that the poor need billions of dollars more in donor aid for state education. But this ignores the reality that poor parents are abandoning government schools to send their children to ‘budget’ private schools that charge very low fees, affordable to parents on minimum wages. Recent research shows that private schools for the poor are superior to government schools – teachers are more committed, the provision of inputs better and educational outcomes better – even after controlling for background variables. All this is accomplished for a fraction of the per‐pupil teacher cost of government schools. The development community could therefore assist the poor by extending access to private schools through targeted vouchers. There are also opportunities for investors to contribute through microfinance‐type loans, dedicated education investment funds and joint ventures with educational entrepreneurs, including the development of brands of budget private schools to help solve the information problem facing poor parents.

Suggested Citation

  • James Tooley, 2007. "Educating Amaretch: Private Schools For The Poor And The New Frontier For Investors," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 37-43, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecaffa:v:27:y:2007:i:2:p:37-43
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0270.2007.00728.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2007.00728.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2007.00728.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James Tooley, 2012. "Big Questions and ??Poor Economics??: Banerjee and Duflo on Schooling in Developing Countries," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 9(3), pages 170-185, September.
    2. Yujuico, Emmanuel & Gelb, Betsy D., 2010. "Better marketing to developing countries: Why and how," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 53(5), pages 501-509, September.
    3. Tooley, James, 2023. "A life in low-cost private education," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecaffa:v:27:y:2007:i:2:p:37-43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0265-0665 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.