IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/40478.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Basic education as a human right redux

Author

Listed:
  • Willmore, Larry

Abstract

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights promises free elementary education and free choice of schools to children and their parents. International fora emphasise the first right while neglecting the second. This essay examines arguments for limiting school choice and finds each of them to be unconvincing. It then describes three school systems: India, with free choice, but only for those who can afford to pay; Sweden, with taxpayer-funded free choice for everyone; and Finland, which allows parents almost no choice at all in basic education.

Suggested Citation

  • Willmore, Larry, 2008. "Basic education as a human right redux," MPRA Paper 40478, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:40478
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/40478/1/MPRA_paper_40478.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Shleifer, 1998. "State versus Private Ownership," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 133-150, Fall.
    2. Pratham Pratham, 2008. "Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2007," Working Papers id:1802, eSocialSciences.
    3. Böhlmark, Anders & Lindahl, Mikael, 2007. "The Impact of School Choice on Pupil Achievement, Segregation and Costs: Swedish Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 2786, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Ahlin, Åsa, 2003. "Does School Competition Matter? Effects of a Large-Scale School Choice Reform on Student Performance," Working Paper Series 2003:2, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    5. Mark Gradstein & Moshe Justman, 2002. "Education, Social Cohesion, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1192-1204, September.
    6. Larry Willmore, 2004. "Basic Education As A Human Right," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 17-21, December.
    7. Sandstrom, F. Mikael & Bergstrom, Fredrik, 2005. "School vouchers in practice: competition will not hurt you," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 351-380, February.
    8. Michael Kremer & Nazmul Chaudhury & F. Halsey Rogers & Karthik Muralidharan & Jeffrey Hammer, 2005. "Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 658-667, 04/05.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dennis Epple & Richard E. Romano & Miguel Urquiola, 2017. "School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(2), pages 441-492, June.
    2. Böhlmark, Anders & Lindahl, Mikael, 2008. "Does School Privatization Improve Educational Achievement? Evidence from Sweden's Voucher Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 3691, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Stephen Machin & Olmo Silva, 2013. "School Structure, School Autonomy and the Tail," CEP Reports 29, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    4. Böhlmark, Anders & Lindahl, Mikael, 2007. "The Impact of School Choice on Pupil Achievement, Segregation and Costs: Swedish Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 2786, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Andrew Eyles & Stephen Machin & Olmo Silva, 2018. "Academies 2 – The New Batch: The Changing Nature of Academy Schools in England," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(1), pages 121-158, March.
    6. Verena Wondratschek & Karin Edmark & Markus Frolich, 2013. "The Short- and Long-term Effects of School Choice on Student Outcomes - Evidence from a School Choice Reform in Sweden," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 111-112, pages 71-101.
    7. Ludger Wößmann, 2006. "Bildungspolitische Lehren aus den internationalen Schülertests: Wettbewerb, Autonomie und externe Leistungsüberprüfung," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(3), pages 417-444, August.
    8. Hinnerich, Björn Tyrefors & Vlachos, Jonas, 2017. "The impact of upper-secondary voucher school attendance on student achievement. Swedish evidence using external and internal evaluations," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-14.
    9. Ludger Woessmann, 2006. "Public-Private Partnership and Schooling Outcomes across Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 1662, CESifo.
    10. Eyles, Andrew & Machin, Stephen & Silva, Olmo, 2015. "Academies 2: the new batch," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 63817, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Burgess, Simon, 2016. "Human Capital and Education: The State of the Art in the Economics of Education," IZA Discussion Papers 9885, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Karthik Muralidharan & Venkatesh Sundararaman, 2011. "Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(1), pages 39-77.
    13. Eyles, Andrew & Hupkau, Claudia & Machin, Stephen, 2016. "School reforms and pupil performance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 9-19.
    14. Edmark, Karin & Frölich, Markus & Wondratschek, Verena, 2014. "Sweden's school choice reform and equality of opportunity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 129-142.
    15. Kaire Põder & Triin Lauri, 2014. "Will Choice Hurt? Compared to What? School Choice Experiment in Estonia," TUT Economic Research Series 11, Department of Finance and Economics, Tallinn University of Technology.
    16. Oliver Himmler, 2009. "The Effects of School Competition on Academic Achievement and Grading Standards," CESifo Working Paper Series 2676, CESifo.
    17. Edmark, Karin & Persson, Lovisa, 2021. "The impact of attending an independent upper secondary school: Evidence from Sweden using school ranking data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    18. Henrekson, Magnus & Stenkula, Mikael, 2009. "Entrepreneurship and Public Policy," Working Paper Series 804, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    19. Duerrenberger, Nicole & Warning, Susanne, 2018. "Corruption and education in developing countries: The role of public vs. private funding of higher education," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 217-225.
    20. Gabriel Heller Sahlgren, 2014. "Handing Over the School Keys: The Impact of Privatisation on Education Quality," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 196-210, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education; human rights; public goods; vouchers; India; Sweden; Finland;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education

    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:pra:mprapa:40478. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.