Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have played a central role in operating private schools across the developing world. Francine Menashy documented in detail in her 2015 NCSPE working paper (No. 224) how the World Bank to this end in 2002 launched its Education For All Fast-Track Initiative (FTI), rebranded in 2011 as the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

To advocates, these schools fill a void generated by state failure. To opponents, poor oversight invites profiteering, inadequate staffing and facilities preclude appropriate accommodation of students with disabilities, and fees, however nominal, exceed the means of indigent families. In addition, subpar pay at these schools often leads teachers into pressuring parents to hire them as after-school tutors, as documented by Tamo Chattopadhay and Maya Roy in their 2017 NCSPE working paper (No. 233) on low-fee private schooling in India. Even where PPPs have evolved to cover fees, there is ample evidence that private schools teach to the test to boost scores on exams in high-profile subjects to win contract renewals, as contended by Steven J. Klees in his 2017 NCSPE working paper (No. 235) on educational privatization in Liberia.

In “Evaluating Public-Private Partnership Schools in Punjab, Pakistan,” Ali Hasan Ansari addresses the effectiveness of four programs in this most populated province of Pakistan. Ansari, a World Bank economist based in Ghana, explains in this working paper that approximately three million children in Punjab attend schools operated by PPPs while approximately twelve million children attend traditional public schools. The four programs Ansari studies range in inception from 2005 to 2016. The justification for this rapid and substantial outsourcing, Ansari writes, derives significantly from the conviction that PPPs operate in a more cost-effective manner than public schools.

Using Henry M. Levin’s prism of choice, equity, efficiency, and social cohesion for assessment, Ansari examines a sample of 812 public, private, and PPP schools across Punjab and finds that the reality of choice afforded by PPP schools may be limited by administrative barriers to switching schools as well as high indirect costs of schooling imposed on parents; that efficiency may be distorted by filtering mechanisms, such as enrollment caps and entrance exams; that equity may be undermined by the failure of PPP schools to locate in the poorest neighborhoods; and that social cohesion stands to fray as the PPP sector grows and erodes support for public schools.

With a thorough literature review, adept application of Levin’s criteria for evaluating the process of privatization, and rigorous statistical analysis, Ansari builds on such prior research in this area by Menashy, Chattopadhay and Roy, and Klees and clears the path to further inquiry.

Samuel E. Abrams
Director, NCSPE
September 14, 2023