Trends in Private Sector Development in World Bank Education Projects
Emerging trends in education show the private sector to be playing an increasingly important role in financing and providing educational services in many countries. Private sector development has not arisen primarily through public policy design, b...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2000/09/693061/trends-private-sector-development-world-bank-education-projects http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19793 |
| Summary: | Emerging trends in education show the
private sector to be playing an increasingly important role
in financing and providing educational services in many
countries. Private sector development has not arisen
primarily through public policy design, but has of course
been affected by the design, and limitations of public
policy. The author traces trends in private sector
development in eleven of seventy World Bank education
projects in 1995-97, asking two questions: What has been the
rationale for Bank lending in education? And, in countries
where there is both privately financed, and publicly
financed, and provided education, how has the Bank
encouraged the private sector to thrive? The eleven country
samples reveal that the Bank's interest in private
sector development is basically in capacity-oriented
privatization, to absorb excess demand for education. This
is crucial to the Bank's general strategy for education
lending: promoting access with equity, focusing on
efficiency in resource allocation, promoting quality, and
supporting capacity building. Absorbing excess demand tends
to involve poorer families, usually much poorer than those
that take advantage of other forms of privatized education.
The Bank emphasizes capacity-oriented privatization,
especially of teacher training for primary, and secondary
schools, as well as institutional capacity building for
tertiary, and vocational education. The underlying principle
is that strengthening the private sector's role in
non-compulsory education over time, will release public
resources for the compulsory (primary) level. The private
sector is emerging as a force governments, donors, and other
technical assistance agencies cannot ignore. Often the term
private sector encompasses households' out-of-pocket
expenses, rather than describing for-profit, or
not-for-profit (religious or otherwise) sectors. And lumpy
investments, supporting both private, and public education,
are the norm. |
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