Private and Public Education: Do Parents Care About School Quality?

Overview & Synopsis

In recent decades, private schooling has flourished in many developing countries. This article investigates the reasons behind this schooling choice and assesses whether the rise in enrollment in private schools is due to differences in quality between them and public schools. To this end, we consider two measures of school quality: an objective one (value-added by the schools) and a subjective one (parents’ perceptions). We focus on children enrolled in primary schools in Pakistan and rely on probit models. We found evidence that both perceived and observed school quality matter. Parents are more likely to send their children to a private institution not only when public schools are of lower quality but also when they think they are. In addition, we find that there are gender and socio-economic barriers to access to private schools.