Abstract:

This paper uses survey data from representative samples of government and private
schools in two states of India, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, to explore systematic
differences between the two school types. We find that private school students have
higher test scores than government school students. However, in both private and
government schools the overall quality is low and learning gains from one grade to the
next are small. There is large variation in the quality of both school types; and observed
school and teacher characteristics are weakly correlated with learning outcomes. There is
considerable sorting among students, and those from higher socio-economic strata select
into private schools. Private schools have lower pupil-teacher ratios and seven to eight
times lower teacher salaries but do not differ systematically in infrastructure and teacher
effort from government schools. Most of the variation in teacher effort is within schools
and is weakly correlated with observed teacher characteristics such as education, training,
experience. After controlling for observed student and school characteristics, the private
school advantage over government schools in test scores varies by state, school type and
grade. Private unrecognized schools do better than private recognized schools. Given the
large salary differential, private schools would clearly be more cost effective even in the
case of no absolute difference in test scores.