Private Schools

Two desk studies were commissioned by NIEPA-UNESCO in connection with the country report presented at the Education for All Conference in Dakar, 2000. One of these studies was on the role of private schools in universal elementary education. The study was later published by NIEPA as ‘Private Schools and Universal Elementary Education, Part I’, OUP, 2002.

As a follow up of the study, a field study was done on low-fee private schools in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The report was titled ‘Case Studies: Private Schools and Universal Elementary Education. Part 2: A Field Survey’. Later the results of this study were published in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37, No. 52, January 2003 under the title ‘Private schools for the less privileged’.

For the field study, a total of six locations were identified in the three sample states – one rural and one urban area in an educationally disadvantaged district in each state. A census of all schools in the sample areas was undertaken and 12 schools were chosen randomly for a detailed survey. Care was taken to choose a mix of different types of management, particularly private unaided schools. In addition, 50 households with at least one child studying in classes 1-8 formed the household sample. Data was collected on all children in the household and detailed data on the one child enrolled in class 1-8.