Page 21 - Education for Development:George Psacharopoulos University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Education for Development: What Policies?c19

learning outcomes than students in public schools. In 16 OECD countries and

10 partner countries, private school students outperform their public school
counterparts by 30 points in reading scores (OECD, 2011c). Much of this
difference remains after adjusting for socioeconomic background

Education yields many of its benefits through the labor market. An
inflexible labor market does not augur well for human capital formation. Too
much regulation on firing and hiring practices and the difficulty of doing

business choke educational development. Such regulations deprive the system
of incentives that would contribute to better delivery. They also deprive the
system of additional finance that would come from those who are willing to pay
for better service.

There are several ways the public and private sector could share the
provision and delivery of equation services (Patrinos et al., 2009). Various

forms of Public Private Partnerships operate in many countries (LaRoque, 2008;
Aslam et al., 2017). In New Zealand, for example, Independent schools receive
government subsidies about one third of the average cost per student in public
schools. In the Netherlands, public and private schools are equally funded by the

government, and schools are free to determine what is taught and how (Patrinos,
2013). In the USA, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program provides vouchers

to poor families to allow them to send their children to private schools.
Studies examining the UK academies have generally found that they have
had a positive impact on student performance and degree completion (Eyles et
al., 2016).

In Sweden, Free Schools allow students to choose any public or private
school, the latter financed by a voucher. Bohlmark and Lindahl (2007) report

positive and significant learning outcome benefits for students in the program.
The relative effectiveness of government versus private schools on student