IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/edecon/v31y2023i5p555-571.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contracting out schools at scale: evidence from Pakistan

Author

Listed:
  • Lee Crawfurd
  • Abdullah Alam

Abstract

Can governments contract out school management at scale? In 2016 the Government of Punjab transferred management of over 4,000 failing primary schools to private operators. Schools remained free to students. Private operators received a government subsidy per enrolled student of less than half per-student spending in government schools. This paper evaluates the effects on performance of converted schools. Comparing early converters to later converters, we estimate that enrolment in treated schools increased by over 60 percent, and test scores declined sharply.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee Crawfurd & Abdullah Alam, 2023. "Contracting out schools at scale: evidence from Pakistan," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(5), pages 555-571, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:edecon:v:31:y:2023:i:5:p:555-571
    DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2022.2113859
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09645292.2022.2113859
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09645292.2022.2113859?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Anand, Gautam & Atluri, Aishwarya & Crawfurd, Lee & Pugatch, Todd & Sheth, Ketki, 2023. "Improving school management in low and middle income countries: A systematic review," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    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:taf:edecon:v:31:y:2023:i:5:p:555-571. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CEDE20 .

    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.