The role of Public Private Partnerships in enhancing access to quality Education: The Case of PEAS Intervention in Uganda

Despite Uganda’s efforts to enhance access to secondary education through the universal secondary education (USE) programme, access to secondary education remains a challenge—especially for poor students and girls. Also, the quality of education in USE schools remains low. In addition, the secondary school system is characterised by low transition and completion rates. Public Private Partnerships (PPP) offer an opportunity to close the gaps in access to education as well as address quality concerns. This brief summarizes the findings of a study that evaluated the Promotion of Equality in African Schools (PEAS)’s network schools—a PPP arrangement—under the Uganda USE programme.1 The results indicate that the PEAS intervention enhanced access to education for poor students and those from remote and hard to reach areas. In addition, students in PEAS schools, who hitherto had poor PLE grades, performed as well as those in private and government schools in the assessment exams suggesting that PEAS intervention improved education quality. The main pathways for quality improvement were school inspection, functionality of parents-teachers associations, effectiveness of child protection policies, and teacher motivation through timely pay and in-service training, among others. These findings have key policy implications. First, carefully selected PPPs are key in enhancing education access and quality. Second, school inspections enhance teacher performance and hence education quality. Third, teacher motivation through timely payments and trainings enhance their productivity. Finally, availability of child protection policies at schools as well as actual enforcement are critical for enhancing student concentration and performance.