Madan, Amman
(2016)
The consequences of privatisation of education for
social stratification.
Learning Curve (25).
pp. 21-23.
Abstract
Author here that privatisation of school or college
education cannot be a satisfactory solution for
India or for any country with a great deal of
internal inequality. Saying clearly what one means
by privatisation first may help. While a case may
be made for an even larger usage of the term, in
this article by privatisation I refer mainly to schools
or colleges which charge fees from parents and
use that as the main resource for paying teachers,
maintaining the school and so on. This is not
the same as schools where the major costs are
borne by grants from the government or from
community donations or from philanthropists. I
include in privatisation the growth of schools and
colleges which are paid for through student loans,
since those, too, have to be eventually paid for by
individual students and their families. So even a
school run by the government, but with most of its
costs borne through school fees, would also be a
form of privatisation. Asking a student to pay most
of the material costs of education relies primarily
on the notion of the private in society, where a
private individual pays a cost in exchange for private
benefits. This is in contrast with where society bears
most of the material costs of education, in return
for a mix of private and public benefits to both the
individual and the community.
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