Students Today, Teachers Tomorrow? Identifying Constraints on the Provision of Education

Abstract

With an estimated one hundred and fifteen million children not attending primary school in the developing world, increasing access to education is critical. Resource constraints limit the extent to which demand based subsidies can do so. This paper focuses on a supply-side factor -the availability of low cost teachers -and the resulting ability of the market to offer affordable education. We use data from Pakistan together with official public school construction guidelines to present an Instrumental Variables estimate of the effect of government school construction on private school formation. We find that private schools are three times more likely to emerge in villages with government girls' secondary schools. In contrast, there is little or no relationship between the presence of a private school and pre-existing girls' primary, or boys' primary and secondary schools. Moreover, there are twice as many educated women and private school teachers' wages are 18 percent lower in villages that received a government girls' secondary school. In an environment with poor female education and low mobility, government girls' secondary schools substantially increase the local supply of skilled women. This lowers wages for women in the local labor market and allows the market to offer affordable education. These findings highlight the prominent role of women as teachers in facilitating educational access and resonates with similar historical evidence from developed economies -the students of today are the teachers of tomorrow.

School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature

“…This reflects that many private schools in India operate without subsidies, even as they cater to very low-income individuals. This is observed in other settings, including Pakistan and parts of Africa (e.g., Andrabi, Das, and Khwaja 2013); in these areas, private expansion has been observed on a magnitude that in middle-or high-income countries would seem to require significant public subsidies. This might reflect parental willingness to escape a deeply dysfunctional public sector in which there is evidence of rampant absenteeism by teachers; see, for example, Duflo,46 The authors further note that not all private schools use Telugu or Hindu as the language of instruction, with some using English instead.…”

The Need for Accountability in Education in Developing Countries

“…If only one school (or a few schools) in the market receives a grant, they find that the school is more likely to invest in expanding access rather than quality; however, when all schools in a market are provided finances, schools are more likely to compete on quality. They also show that labor constraints can make it difficult for private schools to enter or expand (Andrabi, Das, and Khwaja 2013). Private schools in Pakistan rely on female high school graduates to serve as teachers.…”

Crossing Boundaries: Gender, Caste and Schooling in Rural Pakistan

“…This is done in linear form in column (5) and with a cubic polynomial in distance in column (6). In both cases, the   coefficients fall only marginally relative to column (2). Figure 2 plots predicted enrollment for boys and girls as a function of distance based on the estimates in column (6).…”

“…The school census collects detailed information on all schools inside each of these villages as well as schools lying within a 2 km walk of the perimeter of each settlement/habitation of the village. 2 GPS coordinates are available for households and schools, so the distance between each can be calculated. The hamlet in which households and schools are located is also known.…”