The Effects of Private and Public Schooling on Learning Outcomes in India

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Pedagogy - School System, Educational and School Politics, grade: 1,3, University of Heidelberg (Alfred-Weber-Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften), language: English, abstract: This paper tries to estimate the causal effect of one year of private schooling in comparison to public schooling on standardized test score outcomes for Math and English in India, Andhra Pradesh. I also try to estimate the effect of fees on test score outcomes for private schools.

I use a 2-wave panel data set of the Young Lives School Survey of 2016 and 2017. I estimate the private schooling effect with a value-added model, using problem-solving and critical-thinking test scores as control for fixed cognitive ability of pupils. I use a similar model to evaluate the effects of fees. Effects are estimated separately for rural and urban environments. I find higher teacher wages, higher teacher absenteeism, less instructional time and better school infrastructure for public schools. The high cost associated with public schools seems to largely result from higher teacher wages.
I find statistically significant positive private schooling effects in the urban sample for both Math (0.314 SD) and English (0.228 SD). In the rural sample there is no private schooling effect for math and a positive effect for English test scores (0.393 SD). The positive effect for English test scores persists after controlling for the medium of instruction, in both environments but with a smaller effect size.

In absolute terms the performance for both private and public schools is underwhelming, and any positive private schooling effects only translate to a small absolute improvement for test scores. For the effect of fees, I find that higher fees have a positive effect on private school performance only in the urban sample with decreasing marginal returns. For the rural sample I find a negative effect for higher fees.