Low-cost private schools have great potential

On less than a quarter an acre piece of land, Gladways School a non-formal school in the slum of Muslim in Kawangware accommodates more than 250 pupils. Despite its limited resources, the school has managed to present candidates for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exams for sevens year now.

This is just an example of the vast number of non-formal schools spread across various informal settlements to serve the rising need for education access.

In my interaction with the parents when I visited Gladways sometime last year, many explained that they opted for the school because “free primary education is not really free.”

Due to the high demand for public schools since there are less than three public schools in the area, public schools’ administrations have put prohibitive costs (like uniform, admission fee, and other miscellaneous) as a barrier to entry to limit numbers.

This is one of the growing trends researchers have identified since the implementation of free primary education, the upsurge of low-cost private schools within the slums and rural areas. Bridge International Academies, a private company that runs hundreds of low cost schools in Africa, currently boasts of more than 400 schools with a total population of about 100,000 in Kenya, operating within informal settlements and rural areas.

That should give a broader picture of the role of low-cost private school. Without them hundreds of thousands of children would not be able to access education.

But there are concerted efforts to close the Bridge International Academies with a caucus urging its investors to cut ties with the schools due to lack of transparency, poor labour conditions and to some extend non-respect of the local laws. Bridge Academies main funders among others are Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg, British government as well as other international donors like World Bank.

Now, there is no doubt that legitimate concerns have been raised by the anti-Bridge schools caucus. But there is a bigger economic proposition for such low-cost private schools rather than asking for their closure.

First, according to a 2013 Brookings Africa Growth Initiative study, it found out that nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of children in private schools pay fees less than the median per child funding levels in public schools.

Free primary education provision is one of the most important pro-poor policies. But despite its introduction 15 years ago, Kenya is yet to meet the United Nations primary school enrolment Millennium Development Goals but is close enough.

This is where low cost private schools come in to boost more enrolment rates which Kenya needs to order to move up the middle-income ladder.

READ: Ministry in row with Bill Gates-backed schools chain

Second, although primary education may be free, there seems to be little value in it increasing demand for low-cost private schools. Most poor parents voluntarily sign up their children to low-cost private schools indicating their contempt for broken public schools.

Ideally from a policy analysis perspective, free primary education should decrease rather than increase demand for private schools. However, a number of poor parents have in fact moved their children from public schools to Bridge schools giving public schools a thumbs down evaluation to the quality of education.

Bridge Academies has actually cut out its niche, providing a benchmark for public schools on improving quality of education and therefore needs to live up to that role. It has positioned itself as an alternative to providing better education. This was evident when it agreed with the Liberian government to run 120 public schools highlighting a major reason for their run-ins with a number of African governments.

Therefore, it will have to re-position itself as a complement and not a competitor to the state in providing better education like all the many low-cost private schools operating side by side with public schools in order to calibrate the major shortages in primary education and not privatizing education in Africa.No government likes competition when it comes to state provision.