Sorting facts from myths

PPPs are not a panacea for limited budgets because they:

• have misaligned interests and incentives. The primary goal or motive of private sector partners is typically profit, whereas the public sector’s goal is to provide high-quality public education to all students. The desire to keep costs down risks triggering pedagogically dubious cost-cutting measures which can negatively impact educational outcomes. PPPs actually increase the government’s role since it needs to enhance its capacity for procurements, monitoring and evaluation, governance and regulation. Indeed, the World Bank’s 2018 World Development Report concludes that governments may deem it more “straightforward” (i.e. efficient) to provide quality education than “to regulate a disparate collection of providers that may not have the same objectives.”

• often cost more while undermining fiscal sustainability, particularly when governments ignore or are unaware of their deferred costs and associated fiscal risks. PPPs across sectors tend to be more expensive compared to public procurement. Estimates show that the total transaction costs of all types of PPPs could be as high as 20% of the project value.

• are difficult and time-consuming to negotiate when protecting educational interests, and often force governments to absorb risk when projects fail. PPP contracts are much more complex than direct delivery by the government because they need to address all possible contingencies likely to be encountered over the contract duration. Poorly managed PPPs can lead to inefficiencies, cost overruns, and project failures, thus exacerbating budgetary pressures. When partnerships fail, states must intervene to fulfil unmet goals and responsibilities, a cost not included in most cost-benefit analyses of PPPs. PPPs can also create unsustainable dependency on external funding and expertise. 

• do not lower the state’s burden since the politics of the PPP may become challenging. PPPs are viewed publicly as entities owned by the private party, which can result in reduced political support.

• can reduce funding available for government schools in order to meet contractual obligations resulting from a PPP. For example, in the U.S., while Arizona increased its spending on voucher programmes by 270% between 2008 and 2019, the state decreased its per-pupil funding for public education over this period by 5.7%.

• bring weaknesses associated with the private sector into the public system, including removing social obligations to students, increasing business management culture at the expense of transformative education, and declining public accountability. 

• still involve direct or indirect payment by taxpayers and/or students. The government pays for the costs of the PPP from taxation for a service that the public system could provide. If the PPP allows fees levied from students, the service is still not free; the costs are passed directly to students’ families instead of being paid through public budgets.

• PPPs harm equity. They often recruit the “cheapest to educate” students while discriminating against those with additional educational needs. Most research on education PPPs shows negative equity impacts and increased school segregation, particularly in partnerships with for-profit entities. Chile’s voucher programme, the world’s largest, has resulted in high education inequality and segregation with the poorest students generally concentrated in neglected, low-performing government schools. PPPs have a particularly adverse impact on students from marginalised backgrounds. A study of 17 countries found that “in a majority of countries, [PPP schools] are reinforcing social disparities by disproportionately serving students in the upper-income quintiles.” Similarly, women and girls have a greater risk of marginalisation.

• PPPs leave government schools to educate those with the highest educational needs, putting public schools under even greater pressure given the redirection of resources to PPPs.

• PPPs often fail to bring new students into education, instead displacing students from other schools. Research from Punjab, Pakistan shows that increased enrollment in a PPP appeared to stem from pulling in students from other private schools. In another instance, establishing a new PPP school reduced neighborhood public school enrollment by 3%.

• Private schools do not inevitably perform better than government schools and any difference does not translate to PPPs. Any difference in the quality of education between PPPs and public schools is marginal, often disappears after factoring in the socio-economic background of the pupils, and stems from the adoption of organisational strategies, such as longer school days, and instructional practices more oriented toward discipline, ability grouping, and external test preparation (please see the endnotes in the Policy Brief). An analysis of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) across 17 high- and middle-income countries found no achievement advantage in PPP schools after accounting for student selection and peer group effect, finding that “PPP schools appear to be outperforming public schools not through any superior or innovative practices, but rather by cream-skimming more capable students into the private sector.”

• PPPs cut costs by diminishing the teacher profession. Any “efficiency gains of PPPs usually come at the cost of worsening working conditions for teachers,” with long-term implications for the quality of teaching and learning. Doing so ignores the critical role teachers play in improving quality. PPPs often do not place sufficient emphasis on teacher training and professional development, opting instead for increased investments in technology.

• Private providers in PPPs tend to favour traditional education approaches over experimentation. Their innovation often focuses on symbolic aspects, such as school marketing, and management practices, but not necessarily pedagogy and classroom practices (please see the endnotes in the Policy Brief). PPPs’ market logic forces them to maintain a short-term focus, prioritising rapid financial returns over longer-term educational outcomes.

• PPPs rarely scale. While pilot projects or small-scale interventions might succeed, scaling these initiatives towards meaningful national impact presents serious logistical and planning challenges that governments already face in the public system. Building new facilities, recruiting qualified staff, and developing robust administrative systems require larger initial investments and take time, causing PPP implementation on a limited scale that fails to reach the broader population affected by the learning and access crisis.

• PPPs also lack meaningful consultation and ownership from communities (parents, learners, teachers, etc.). When PPPs design and implement programmes without consulting and involving local stakeholders, they may either fail to address the specific needs and challenges or foster resistance to change and a lack of trust. Failing to build support for a given “reform” risks the PPP devolving into churn that stakeholders eventually tune out, preventing opportunities for real educational gains.

• PPPs find maintaining quality while scaling difficult. Scaling up quickly can compromise quality if adequate control measures are not taken and is constrained by the availability of skilled teachers and administrative staff who are hard to find, train and retain. Thus, in Punjab, Pakistan, increased enrolment in PPP schools was accompanied by a rapid decline in test scores.

• Private schools and PPPs are not inherently more accountable. Space for citizen engagement in private schools may be fairly limited. A DFID Rigorous Review found some limited evidence of parental engagement in decision-making in low-fee private schools, but no evidence of users actually exiting schools due to quality concerns. Furthermore, the focus on choice ignores the counterfactual; parents can exert direct accountability in private schools through empowering Parent Teacher Associations and more generally by amplifying parental voice.

• Parental choice is constrained and often not based on an objective sense of quality. The “choice” argument rests on the assumption that parents have (equal) access to information; however, they often lack information or value different aspects of an educational institution from what education policymakers might expect. Economically marginalised parents may lack literacy, time, and/or capacity to absorb information and act on it (given a lack of political power) relative to middle-class parents, making it unlikely that all parents will have the same information or ability to make a school choice. Also, parents often have a variety of reasons for choosing schools, such as their children’s peers having the social status to which they aspire, different extra-curricular opportunities, specialised programmes, etc. Lastly, educational choices that parents make may run counter to the research on the impact of quality. Thus, as the World Development Report 2018 points out, “families are not necessarily knowledgeable about pedagogy,” allowing private schools to induce them to make choices that slow student learning – e.g. discouraging mother tongue instruction.