The Beautiful Tree (30 page)

Private schools are outperforming public schools, usually for a fraction of the cost. And of course, this takes into account only the costs
within the school itself
: public schools are also supported by a mammoth and expensive bureaucracy. Private schools have no such financing behind them.

What I found in China was significantly different from the other studies. My first visit had told me that the main reason proprietors established private schools was not because public schools were, in general, perceived to be of low quality, as in all the other studies, but simply that the public schools were geographically much too inaccessible to the poor villagers. This was also the parents’ main reason they sent their children to private schools. Children would have to walk for at least an hour, oftentimes more, across mountains to reach the public schools. This was too far, especially for the girls, parents said. And during much of the year, the journey was simply impossible, with the heavy rains and snow.

Given this, what I found may not be surprising. The private schools were not, in general, better equipped than the public schools, and class sizes and teacher commitment were roughly equal in both:

Given this lack of advantages, it is worth repeating that private schools, however, obviously provided what poor parents wanted, namely, a school that was accessible to their children, whereas public schools did not, instead being rather remote and inaccessible. It is also important to stress that school fees in both public and private schools were approximately equal. But private schools had to provide
all
the facilities above, plus teacher salaries from these school fees, whereas government schools did not have to cover any of their costs. Public schools, in other words, were spending far more per pupil.

However, in terms of pupil achievement, something very interesting emerges. For this part of the research, we tested children in the Ding Xi region, which included Zhang County where I’d found my first private schools for the poor in the remote villages. We chose Ding Xi because it was one of the poorest and least-developed regions in Gansu province.
⁷
It was poorer than Ling Xia, where DfID was conducting its work on school development plans. My team tested 2,616 children in 218 schools, using standardized tests in mathematics and Chinese. We were able to divide the schools into three types: private schools run by proprietors (for-profit private), private schools run by villagers (nonprofit private), and public schools.

On both tests,
students in the for-profit private schools achieved higher scores than those in both the nonprofit private and public schools
. The mean score in for-profit private schools was 62.38 percent (math) and 68.83 percent (Chinese), compared with 57.72 percent (math) and 66.72 percent (Chinese) in public schools. Nonprofit private schools came out lowest, at 53.48 percent (math) and 60.71 percent (Chinese). These differences, although small, were statistically significant. However, it must be reemphasized that public schools spent far more per pupil than either type of private school.

That is, of all schools in our Chinese study, the for-profit private schools performed the best—so much for the criticisms of the development experts against the profit motive in education. And once we statistically controlled for background variables, the differences in achievement between public and nonprofit private schools became insignificant, but the differences between for-profit and the other two types actually widened.

This was because, importantly, the children in both types of private schools were much less privileged than those in the public schools—as might be expected, given that they came from the poorest villages, whereas children in the public schools were from the larger, wealthier villages. The students in public schools
had the highest IQs
—which is normally associated with higher achievement. Moreover, children in the private schools were significantly poorer than those in public schools: 93 percent of the students’ fathers in the nonprofit and 84 percent in the for-profit schools were peasant farmers—the lowest-income occupation possible in the mountains, compared with 81 percent in the public schools. Fathers of children in the for-profit private schools were also the least educated—they averaged 5.1 years of education, compared with 5.4 years in nonprofit and 6.4 years in public schools. The same was true for mothers (for-profit private schools, 2.3 years of education, compared with 2.7 years and 3.7 years in nonprofit and public schools, respectively). All this was reflected in the average family income, which was lowest for students in the for-profit private schools—2,692 rembini ($332) per year, compared with 2,716 rembini ($335) in the nonprofit and 3,355 rembini ($414) in the public schools.

Again, it is important to note that these superior (or equal) achievement levels in the private schools were
not
obtained from higher spending inputs, at least in terms of teacher salaries. For teacher salaries were
much lower
in private than public schools. The mean average teacher salary was nearly twice as high in the public as the private schools.

Private schools in rural Gansu province, China, are providing parents with what they want, a nearby school, rather than a remote and inaccessible one. Although definitely poorer in terms of school facilities, the private schools are not inferior in terms of achievement to the public schools. They achieve similar or higher results with teacher salaries only a fraction of those in public schools.

China is a special case; but it still shows remarkable advantages for the private schools for the poor, probably the most remote private schools anywhere on this planet.

On my journey, I had read the development experts’ thoughts on low-cost private education. They universally appeared to condemn it. Curiously, they appeared to condemn it without any real evidence. My research showed that they appeared wrong on all counts. Perhaps the private schools are in pretty meager buildings, perhaps they do have less-trained teachers, paid much below union rates. But these perceived disadvantages seem to be irrelevant: Well-trained and well-paid teachers don’t lead to higher teacher commitment—in fact, the opposite seems to be true. What I found was that poor parents send their children to private schools
because they are better
. They are better than public schools with regard to higher teacher commitment and smaller class sizes. They are better on the vast majority of school inputs. They are better in academic achievement, even after controlling for background variables. And not only are they better in all these respects, they are cheaper to run, at least in terms of teachers’ salaries. Parents are not ignoramuses. They know what they are doing.

By this point in my journey, I was ready to burst. I knew I had to share my findings with the development experts. But would they be pleased to hear that the poor have found a way of sidestepping the massive problems in public education? It was time to find out.

10. Making Enemies with Joy Beside Me

He tosses my moleskin notebook down onto the low table in front of him. Thank God that my writing is so terrible; surely he cannot have deciphered much? He had been unsmiling throughout while he flicked through the pages. He is unsmiling still. He avoids looking at me, me sporting my open, receptive expression that usually works in winning over even hostile audiences. Instead, he glowers into the middle distance. He is one of the most unpleasant and angry men I have ever met. I allow myself the luxury of thinking that he is also one of the ugliest men I have ever met too; and incongruous, given all that he is saying. His “Forward with Zanu-PF, Down with Colonialism” African-style open-necked shirt sits uncomfortably with his baseball gap, advertising some American brand, and his Nike sneakers. But sitting in front of him, he in his comfortable leather swivel chair and I on a bare wooden bench, I don’t know how this is all going to end.

I’ve started to have that terrible fear in my lower back—I’ve only had it once or twice in my life, way back, confronted with ugly, huge, glowering bullies in distant school bathrooms, but recognize it immediately. It’s a horrible, hollow tingling somewhere at the base of your spine, or is it in your bowels? Perhaps it’s your body getting ready to evacuate and flee from danger. I cannot flee.

I’m back in Zimbabwe, in the ruling party Zanu-PF regional offices in Marondera, some 100 kilometers from Harare, the capital. Worse, I’m in the dingy underground windowless security offices, sitting in front of the regional head of security. Blocking the only exit is his assistant, who stands with a completely blank expression by the closed door. It is two days before the elections in April 2005, which will return Robert Mugabe to power under widespread accusations of vote rigging. Two Western journalists working undercover for the British
Sunday Times
have just been arrested outside Harare and thrown into the notorious Chikurubi prison, from where they’ll be lucky to escape unharmed.

He ignores me. I have tried to speak to him in my limited and half-remembered Shona, the language of the majority tribe in Zimbabwe, a language I learned 22 years ago when I was a mathematics teacher in Zimbabwe, helping to build the new Mugabe regime. This normally ignites warm laughter and friendship whenever I attempt it in this country. He flinches when he hears me; I’m an unwelcome object in his world whose future hangs in the balance. There is no room for warmth or camaraderie here. He turns to my new friends, sitting on either side of me. They talk fast in Shona; I understand none of it. But I get the gist. I’m not welcome.

On one side is Mrs. Joy Farirai, the proprietor of Bright Dawn School, which is operating on the outskirts of Marondera. On the other side is her 21-year-old son Tichaona, who is the school’s finance manager. I had met them both just 45 minutes ago. At 9:00 a.m. precisely, I’d arrived in a battered old taxi outside their school.

Mrs. Farirai had seemed very nervous and uncomfortable when I’d introduced myself and Leonard, a young Zimbabwean who had been acting as my guide for the last three days, although her son was warmer and more welcoming. There had been a phone call, it transpired. Tichaona explained that his mother had told the chairman of their parent-teacher association (PTA) that I was visiting after I’d spoken to her last night, just to keep things regular. Now he wanted to meet me. That seemed fair enough. “We should meet him before you tour the school,” Tichaona explained, in his beautifully deep, rich English accent. Fair enough, too, I thought. I’m always keen to meet any officials and keep things regular.

Mrs. Farirai had tried many times to call him on the landline. Eventually she got through. “Okay,” she said, “he’s at his office. We will just go to visit my chairman now, and then we can talk properly.” We piled into my taxi and drove the short distance across town. As we passed our hotel, suddenly Leonard said that he had left his “small watch” in his hotel room and needed to get out and pick it up: won’t I come and look for it with him? Only later did that strike me as odd—his watch must have been
so
small that he had been asking me for the time ever since I had met him. “Don’t be silly,” I’d said, “I’ve got to meet the chairman.” I become annoyed at his insistence, thinking that now he was showing his true colors. Only over breakfast I had been thinking how sweetly respectful he had been toward me and my work over the three days I’d known him; now he’s become insolent and hotheaded. He changed tack: “You need to get your bag,” he insisted. Equally I insisted that I could get it later. So we dropped him off at the hotel and drove around the corner . . . through the imposing steel gates of the Zanu-PF regional headquarters. At the time, this only merited an internal chuckle from me, so the chairman of the PTA is also the chairman of the regional branch of Zanu-PF!

Although the chairman had been there five minutes before when we had phoned, he had now mysteriously disappeared. We were led into the downstairs security room, where one Zanu-PF official brusquely questioned us. What was I doing here? Why did I want to visit private schools? He abruptly left, to return 15 minutes later with the regional head of security.