New Delhi, January 16
At a time when an increasing number of poor parents in rural India are on a saving spree to send their wards to private schools, new evidence shows there is no need to do that.

The humble government schools are doing as well and in some cases better than private schools when it comes to reading abilities. Even for English, the differentials in learning outcomes narrow down as you control external factors — other than the type of school — which impact learning of children.

For instance, last year, in classes 1 to 5, the percentage of rural children who could read basic text was 43.6 in government as against 52.2 in private schools — a point percentage difference of 8.6 which would fuel the perception that private schools are better than government.

But statisticians term this difference as unreal because it is based on simple cross tabulation of learning outcomes. This difference does not account for the other factors that affect a child’s ability to learn — education level of parents, supplemental help at home, ability of a family to pay for tuition, etc.

When these real characteristics (other than the type of school a child attends) are controlled, the learning differential between the government and private schools in terms of a student’s ability to read class I text in local language drops from 8.6 to 2.9 percentage points. This is, statistically speaking, a massive drop — from 20 to 5 per cent.

“It simply means that two-thirds of learning differentials between the government and private schools are attributed to factors other than the type of school. In terms of reading in the local language, rural private schools are performing no better or worse than government schools. This makes us question the thrust on privatisation under the new Right to Education Act and also whether paid private schooling is any better than free government education,” says Dr Wilima Wadhwa, a leading statistician. She has brought out preliminary study on public, private schooling in rural India.

India has witnessed a growing privatisation of education with enrollment shooting up from 16.3 pc in 2005 to 22.6 pc in 2008 —- an increase of around 40 pc. Now, the RTE Act also sets aside 25 pc seats in private schools for the marginal students, with the government to pay for them. “But do we have evidence to suggest this is needed?” Wadhwa asks. Her study shows that in case of reading abilities, the learning differential between private and government schools actually disappears in most states as external factors are controlled. They are the most pronounced in Uttarakhand, Chattisgarh, AP and TN. In Madhya Pradesh, the government schools outperform private when external factors are controlled. In UP, the difference in simple cross tabulation is 16.6 percentage points and it drops to 9.15 when other factors are controlled. “This means 7.5 per cent of the observed difference is due to other factors,” says Wadhwa.

Even for English, the percentage of children in classes I to 5 who can read simple words or more in English is 26.5 in government and 44.2 in private schools - making the difference 17.7 percentage points. However, it is just 10.2 percentage points under controlled conditions.