James Tooley

A Chain of Low-Cost Private Schools for England

9 min read Private schooling in the United Kingdom is extraordinarily expensive, affordable only to those in the highest income bracket. But in developing countries a surprising phenomenon has emerged—low-cost private schools affordable even to those on the poverty line. Now chains of low-cost private schools are being created, consolidating the market, raising investment for educational improvements, and…

The Role and Impact of Private Schools in Developing Countries: A Response to the DFID-Commissioned ‘Rigorous Literature Review’

96 min read Forward Bringing about transformation in…

Extending Access to Low-Cost Private Schools through Vouchers: An Alternative Interpretation of a Two-Stage ‘School Choice’ Experiment in India

26 min read ABSTRACT Muralidharan and Sundararaman report…

Affordability of Private Schools: Exploration of a Conundrum and Towards a Definition of ‘Low-Cost’

25 min read ABSTRACT The affordability of private education is a contentious issue. While the extent of ‘low-cost’ private schooling is widely accepted, there is no agreement on what ‘low-cost’ means in this context and how this relates to affordability for poor families. This paper addresses the lacuna in the literature by defining ‘low-cost’ in relation to what…

A Lesson in Bias

3 min read What’s wrong with low-cost education in poor countries? Quite a lot, you might think, if you read a new report from the Department for International Development. Low-cost private schools serve around 70 percent of children in poor urban areas and nearly a third of rural children too. But the issue raises controversy among academics and…