Karopady, D. D.
(2016)
Do private schools really ensure better learning
outcomes for children?
Learning Curve (25).
pp. 25-26.
Abstract
Are private schools in India really good? This
question would have gone through the minds of
most readers of this article at some point in time or
the other and they may or may not have found any
definitive answer to it, because the question does
not have very easy answers.
To begin with, there are a wide variety of private
schools. These include high-end urban private
schools, premium residential schools, ‘alternate
schools’, private schools catering to the urban
middle class, low-fee private schools (mostly in
rural areas) and so on. Hence, clubbing all of these
in one group would be erroneous. The answer to
the question is further complicated by the fact
that there is very little agreement on the definition
of a ‘good school’ and how it can be measured.
To be sure, education is a complex subject and
is influenced by several in-school factors such
as curriculum, text books, pedagogy, number of
teachers, teacher preparation, pupil-teacher ratio,
to name just a few, as well as outside school
factors like home environment, socio-economic
background, availability of educational support
systems etc. Learning outcomes is only one of the
many parameters but important and relatively
more easily measured and widely understood. In
this paper, I will discuss findings from a few research
studies which largely use learning outcomes based
measures to draw their conclusions. While it is
not my intention to say that this will provide clear
answers, it is hoped that it will shed some light on
the difficult topic.This line of thinking however has a serious limitation.
The children in private schools come from a
significantly different socio-economic background
as compared to children in government schools.
This makes the comparison very unequal, like
comparing apples and oranges. A fair comparison
would need children from similar backgrounds
in private schools and government schools to be
assessed simultaneously using common tools.
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