I’m talking about war education war and
peace I’m talking about what happens in
war-torn conflict-affected States mainly
across sub-saharan Africa but in other
countries too and about what happens to
education there now we have this
accepted wisdom the conventional wisdom
says something like this yes as soon as
conflict is over we’ve got to get proper
universal public education run by a
proper Minister of Education just like
in any normal country like in Germany
like in France like in England and in
this talk I’m saying why I’m challenging
this I’m saying why do we want that when
first of all there’s already another
viable better alternative to that public
education system and secondly because
part of the problem of government
education in these types of environments
is that it itself can be a factor
leading to war and conflict so those are
the two aspects of my talk let’s start
with this alternative aspect first of
all now look I’ve been researching for
nearly 20 years as it’s my life’s work
this unusual strange curious phenomenon
of low-cost private education private
education in the slums and villages
across the developing world I first
discovered it for myself eighteen years
ago when I accidentally bumped into a
low-cost private school in the slums of
Hyderabad in India and then after found
several of these schools many of these
schools and realized something rather
exciting was going on I then went
looking deliberately for it in in Ghana
and Nigeria in West Africa in Kenya and
Uganda in East Africa different parts of
India even in rural China and I found
this extraordinary phenomenon where the
majority of poor children in urban areas
are not going to the public schools
they’ve up the
parents have abandoned the public
schools and they’re going to private
schools yes some run by NGOs and
churches but many run by proprietors
entrepreneurs who are serving the poor
in this grassroots revolution
so I III done this research across the
world and I was talking private schools
I’m saying private schools are good for
the poor and then people said well
you’re talking about the poor in India
and different parts of Africa but what
about the most marginalized populations
what’s happening to them can you really
say private education is good for them
so I decided to do a another research
project and I went to places like this
is South Sudan go daily just a few miles
outside of her of Juba where signs of
war are still there I went to Somaliland
this is the water carted the water
deliverer in the streets of her gaze of
the capital went to Sierra Leone these
are children of stone breakers whose
take big boulders and gradually Whittle
them down into manageable size stones to
make roads with and I went to Liberia
these this is one of the slums called
West Point in this in the capital
Monrovia I went looking for these
low-cost schools and looking to find out
how much I could discover about them my
initial indications weren’t very
positive I talked to people who knew
these countries and others and they said
you might find some church schools you
might find some NGOs schools but you
won’t find those sort of schools that
I’ve been talking about the entrepreneur
driven low-cost private school and
indeed when I first arrived in I was
gone on my way to light beer I got a
call from the people who had said I was
I was I was gonna meet there and they
were gonna help me there they said oh
sorry it’s the wrong time for you to
come thee there’s an inauguration of the
President and so all the important
people won’t be available to meet you
but for me actually important people
were not the president and her entourage
the important people were there to meet
me and acts went looking by myself in
the flat five slums of Monrovia to see
what I could find there there were names
these these slums
one was called West Point another dough
community one was called a very
evocative name chicken soup factory and
I guess you can you can guess why it was
called that we’d be wrong if you guessed
why red light is so named red light is
named after the functioning traffic
light in Monrovia and so I went looking
in there and found so many schools yes
church schools yes NGO schools but so
many of these proprietor driven low-cost
private schools
I found this school Ronald Reagan
Institute I said to my guide by this
time I said oh I must have a photograph
of that for the Americans I know
and he said them but who’s Ronald Reagan
and I guess and maybe in 1020 years time
we’ll go and find the Donald Trump
school there maybe please don’t object
and this is what we found
church schools children are there in us
in a minority their tiny number in the
government schools but the vast majority
of children 61% are in those private you
could call them for-profit proprietor
driven entrepreneurial schools that that
are serving the poor but that was a
chart when we looking at nearly five
hundred schools that we found in those
five slums but of course some of the
children could have gone out of the slum
to government schools I realized that
the slums
so we then did a household survey in one
of those thumbs doe community we went
around 2000 over 2,000 households
talking to the head of the household
asking where are your children the age
five to fourteen where are they and look
at that I mean the first figure there
you notice eight percent in government
school next to that you can see almost
three times more children are out of
school but isn’t it extraordinary
seventy-one percent of children in those
in that slum but likely to be across
these slums are going to these private
schools these initiative
built by people within those communities
serving those communities themselves
quite an extraordinary initiative but
this this phenomenon is ubiquitous it’s
there everywhere but it also in a sense
reaches the earth the parts that other
school types do not reach and I think I
can clearly illustrate that with this
map of Juba you can see that’s the the
White Nile they’re coming down here and
this is like the center of Juba and then
you go further afield it gets more and
more remote and dangerous as you go this
way but I’ve just I’ve disaggregated the
schools into three types there the
government schools are public schools
and then the proprietor schools and the
nonprofit schools the church schools and
so on and you’ll see you can see what’s
happening there can’t you the government
schools are all there in the safe area
right next to the center of town near
the airport near the river as you go
further afield that’s where the private
schools emerged the low-cost private
schools and particularly you’ll see
those low cost entrepreneurial schools
that are run by entrepreneurs serving
the poor so they reached the parts other
schools do not reach they’re also
affordable we can look at this in
several ways
but one of the criticisms I get of my
work goes like this well you’re talking
about the poor you’re talking about the
disadvantage that dispossessed and
you’re talking about them paying money
to go to private schools but my answer
is always government schools are not
free now in terms of fees or levies yes
the private schools are much more
expensive than the government’s course
this is data from Monrovia again from
Liberia yes you can see clearly there
the attendance of the private schools is
much more costly to parents than the
fees at the government schools however
there are also additional costs of
sending a child to school so you need to
buy it if you’re poor you need to buy
shoes
you need to buy uniform you need to buy
books transportation and all these
additional costs and if you throw those
in what you see there it’s quite clearly
in the middle there the other costs
they’re roughly the same in public and
private and when you add together the
other costs to the fees you get
something there you see yes going to
private school in red is more expensive
than going to government school in in
blue but actually it’s not a million
miles away the cost to a parent of
sending a child to a government school
is fully seventy five percent of the
cost of sending to one of these private
schools and so it’s affordable with
other ways of looking at this
interpreting it but we find these
schools are affordable to even those
parents on the poverty line in these
schools in these communities and I like
to say one of the other virtues of these
low cost private schools is that they
are an educational piece dividend you
can see this quite clearly when you
first go into these poor communities of
countries like his Sierra Leone as the
war civil war is ending you’ll find
schools being created like this one or
this one’s in South Sudan such a simple
structure but immediately they come up
this is Somaliland of schools being
bombed out but then it finds an
alternative accommodation very very
quickly and they’re open they’re they’re
open all over these places but we we got
the dates of their opening we found out
when these schools opened and found that
something interesting okay this is the
overall picture this is now Sierra Leone
so you can see where the civil war ends
there that bold line coming down and you
see yes as a gradual growth of schools
over time we can disaggregate that into
the different types of schools well
there’s lots of different types of
schools there i want to disaggregate it
further and show you something that’s
really interesting this is what happens
the government schools stay roughly the
same number when civil war ends but the
schools that increase in
number of the private proprietor schools
and the church schools and in fact the
proprietor schools are almost increasing
at an exponential rate they are serving
these communities they’re serving them
in a way to bring a peace dividend
they’re the ones who are doing it not
the government and my last slide about
this section is preferred choice parents
prefer the private schools to the
government schools this is some data
again from the Monrovia household survey
and you can see all the way down we ask
them did they prefer public or private
eighty-two percent of parents of these
two thousand parents preferred the
private schools only thirteen percent
said they preferred government schools
and they knew why they preferred them
that’s the key on all all these
indicators here you’ll see is it true of
private school is it true of public
school a safe place for girls ninety-one
percent said it was true private schools
only 31 percent said true of public
schools good quality teaching again
nearly ninety percent in the private
schools only forty percent in the public
schools and girls encouraged
academically eighty nine point two
percent of parents said it happened in
the private schools but not there in the
public schools parents have their
reasons I’ve mentioned girls a couple of
times there I could have told you more
about these schools are fair to girls
over fifty percent of the of the pupil
numbers are girls in these schools it’s
not the case that parents don’t send
their girls to these schools the
low-cost private schools in these poor
areas what about that second aspect of
my talk that I said why would you want
that accepted wisdom why would you want
the public schooling in these areas when
there’s a better alternative but why
would you want it when public education
often contributes to civil war in the
first place and it’s not me saying that
this is some some quotes from UNESCO
education UNESCO says is often an
underlying element in the political
dynamic pushing countries towards
violence how does it do it well it does
it perhaps
in three ways exclude it marginalizes
and it it oppresses it excludes first of
all so when the one ethnic group is in
government it can exclude other st
ethnic groups from educational together
or it can marginalize those other ethnic
groups by giving them an inferior or or
less education than the other ethnic
groups or it can oppress them entirely
by pushing a curriculum which says that
this ethnic group or this religious
group is not as good as another one all
those ways governments work so why go
for the public schooling alternative
when there is this private sector
alternative instead what I’m saying to
you is let’s ignore the normal way of
doing things let’s instead go for the
solution that is better let’s have our
revised wisdom in countries torn by
Civil War this grassroots revolution is
taking place embrace the private schools
let’s not go for the Ministry of
Education option these schools the
low-cost private schools have a few
friends I’m one of the few people
championing these schools as I go around
the world be great if you can join me on that mission thank you very much
peace I’m talking about what happens in
war-torn conflict-affected States mainly
across sub-saharan Africa but in other
countries too and about what happens to
education there now we have this
accepted wisdom the conventional wisdom
says something like this yes as soon as
conflict is over we’ve got to get proper
universal public education run by a
proper Minister of Education just like
in any normal country like in Germany
like in France like in England and in
this talk I’m saying why I’m challenging
this I’m saying why do we want that when
first of all there’s already another
viable better alternative to that public
education system and secondly because
part of the problem of government
education in these types of environments
is that it itself can be a factor
leading to war and conflict so those are
the two aspects of my talk let’s start
with this alternative aspect first of
all now look I’ve been researching for
nearly 20 years as it’s my life’s work
this unusual strange curious phenomenon
of low-cost private education private
education in the slums and villages
across the developing world I first
discovered it for myself eighteen years
ago when I accidentally bumped into a
low-cost private school in the slums of
Hyderabad in India and then after found
several of these schools many of these
schools and realized something rather
exciting was going on I then went
looking deliberately for it in in Ghana
and Nigeria in West Africa in Kenya and
Uganda in East Africa different parts of
India even in rural China and I found
this extraordinary phenomenon where the
majority of poor children in urban areas
are not going to the public schools
they’ve up the
parents have abandoned the public
schools and they’re going to private
schools yes some run by NGOs and
churches but many run by proprietors
entrepreneurs who are serving the poor
in this grassroots revolution
so I III done this research across the
world and I was talking private schools
I’m saying private schools are good for
the poor and then people said well
you’re talking about the poor in India
and different parts of Africa but what
about the most marginalized populations
what’s happening to them can you really
say private education is good for them
so I decided to do a another research
project and I went to places like this
is South Sudan go daily just a few miles
outside of her of Juba where signs of
war are still there I went to Somaliland
this is the water carted the water
deliverer in the streets of her gaze of
the capital went to Sierra Leone these
are children of stone breakers whose
take big boulders and gradually Whittle
them down into manageable size stones to
make roads with and I went to Liberia
these this is one of the slums called
West Point in this in the capital
Monrovia I went looking for these
low-cost schools and looking to find out
how much I could discover about them my
initial indications weren’t very
positive I talked to people who knew
these countries and others and they said
you might find some church schools you
might find some NGOs schools but you
won’t find those sort of schools that
I’ve been talking about the entrepreneur
driven low-cost private school and
indeed when I first arrived in I was
gone on my way to light beer I got a
call from the people who had said I was
I was I was gonna meet there and they
were gonna help me there they said oh
sorry it’s the wrong time for you to
come thee there’s an inauguration of the
President and so all the important
people won’t be available to meet you
but for me actually important people
were not the president and her entourage
the important people were there to meet
me and acts went looking by myself in
the flat five slums of Monrovia to see
what I could find there there were names
these these slums
one was called West Point another dough
community one was called a very
evocative name chicken soup factory and
I guess you can you can guess why it was
called that we’d be wrong if you guessed
why red light is so named red light is
named after the functioning traffic
light in Monrovia and so I went looking
in there and found so many schools yes
church schools yes NGO schools but so
many of these proprietor driven low-cost
private schools
I found this school Ronald Reagan
Institute I said to my guide by this
time I said oh I must have a photograph
of that for the Americans I know
and he said them but who’s Ronald Reagan
and I guess and maybe in 1020 years time
we’ll go and find the Donald Trump
school there maybe please don’t object
and this is what we found
church schools children are there in us
in a minority their tiny number in the
government schools but the vast majority
of children 61% are in those private you
could call them for-profit proprietor
driven entrepreneurial schools that that
are serving the poor but that was a
chart when we looking at nearly five
hundred schools that we found in those
five slums but of course some of the
children could have gone out of the slum
to government schools I realized that
the slums
so we then did a household survey in one
of those thumbs doe community we went
around 2000 over 2,000 households
talking to the head of the household
asking where are your children the age
five to fourteen where are they and look
at that I mean the first figure there
you notice eight percent in government
school next to that you can see almost
three times more children are out of
school but isn’t it extraordinary
seventy-one percent of children in those
in that slum but likely to be across
these slums are going to these private
schools these initiative
built by people within those communities
serving those communities themselves
quite an extraordinary initiative but
this this phenomenon is ubiquitous it’s
there everywhere but it also in a sense
reaches the earth the parts that other
school types do not reach and I think I
can clearly illustrate that with this
map of Juba you can see that’s the the
White Nile they’re coming down here and
this is like the center of Juba and then
you go further afield it gets more and
more remote and dangerous as you go this
way but I’ve just I’ve disaggregated the
schools into three types there the
government schools are public schools
and then the proprietor schools and the
nonprofit schools the church schools and
so on and you’ll see you can see what’s
happening there can’t you the government
schools are all there in the safe area
right next to the center of town near
the airport near the river as you go
further afield that’s where the private
schools emerged the low-cost private
schools and particularly you’ll see
those low cost entrepreneurial schools
that are run by entrepreneurs serving
the poor so they reached the parts other
schools do not reach they’re also
affordable we can look at this in
several ways
but one of the criticisms I get of my
work goes like this well you’re talking
about the poor you’re talking about the
disadvantage that dispossessed and
you’re talking about them paying money
to go to private schools but my answer
is always government schools are not
free now in terms of fees or levies yes
the private schools are much more
expensive than the government’s course
this is data from Monrovia again from
Liberia yes you can see clearly there
the attendance of the private schools is
much more costly to parents than the
fees at the government schools however
there are also additional costs of
sending a child to school so you need to
buy it if you’re poor you need to buy
shoes
you need to buy uniform you need to buy
books transportation and all these
additional costs and if you throw those
in what you see there it’s quite clearly
in the middle there the other costs
they’re roughly the same in public and
private and when you add together the
other costs to the fees you get
something there you see yes going to
private school in red is more expensive
than going to government school in in
blue but actually it’s not a million
miles away the cost to a parent of
sending a child to a government school
is fully seventy five percent of the
cost of sending to one of these private
schools and so it’s affordable with
other ways of looking at this
interpreting it but we find these
schools are affordable to even those
parents on the poverty line in these
schools in these communities and I like
to say one of the other virtues of these
low cost private schools is that they
are an educational piece dividend you
can see this quite clearly when you
first go into these poor communities of
countries like his Sierra Leone as the
war civil war is ending you’ll find
schools being created like this one or
this one’s in South Sudan such a simple
structure but immediately they come up
this is Somaliland of schools being
bombed out but then it finds an
alternative accommodation very very
quickly and they’re open they’re they’re
open all over these places but we we got
the dates of their opening we found out
when these schools opened and found that
something interesting okay this is the
overall picture this is now Sierra Leone
so you can see where the civil war ends
there that bold line coming down and you
see yes as a gradual growth of schools
over time we can disaggregate that into
the different types of schools well
there’s lots of different types of
schools there i want to disaggregate it
further and show you something that’s
really interesting this is what happens
the government schools stay roughly the
same number when civil war ends but the
schools that increase in
number of the private proprietor schools
and the church schools and in fact the
proprietor schools are almost increasing
at an exponential rate they are serving
these communities they’re serving them
in a way to bring a peace dividend
they’re the ones who are doing it not
the government and my last slide about
this section is preferred choice parents
prefer the private schools to the
government schools this is some data
again from the Monrovia household survey
and you can see all the way down we ask
them did they prefer public or private
eighty-two percent of parents of these
two thousand parents preferred the
private schools only thirteen percent
said they preferred government schools
and they knew why they preferred them
that’s the key on all all these
indicators here you’ll see is it true of
private school is it true of public
school a safe place for girls ninety-one
percent said it was true private schools
only 31 percent said true of public
schools good quality teaching again
nearly ninety percent in the private
schools only forty percent in the public
schools and girls encouraged
academically eighty nine point two
percent of parents said it happened in
the private schools but not there in the
public schools parents have their
reasons I’ve mentioned girls a couple of
times there I could have told you more
about these schools are fair to girls
over fifty percent of the of the pupil
numbers are girls in these schools it’s
not the case that parents don’t send
their girls to these schools the
low-cost private schools in these poor
areas what about that second aspect of
my talk that I said why would you want
that accepted wisdom why would you want
the public schooling in these areas when
there’s a better alternative but why
would you want it when public education
often contributes to civil war in the
first place and it’s not me saying that
this is some some quotes from UNESCO
education UNESCO says is often an
underlying element in the political
dynamic pushing countries towards
violence how does it do it well it does
it perhaps
in three ways exclude it marginalizes
and it it oppresses it excludes first of
all so when the one ethnic group is in
government it can exclude other st
ethnic groups from educational together
or it can marginalize those other ethnic
groups by giving them an inferior or or
less education than the other ethnic
groups or it can oppress them entirely
by pushing a curriculum which says that
this ethnic group or this religious
group is not as good as another one all
those ways governments work so why go
for the public schooling alternative
when there is this private sector
alternative instead what I’m saying to
you is let’s ignore the normal way of
doing things let’s instead go for the
solution that is better let’s have our
revised wisdom in countries torn by
Civil War this grassroots revolution is
taking place embrace the private schools
let’s not go for the Ministry of
Education option these schools the
low-cost private schools have a few
friends I’m one of the few people
championing these schools as I go around
the world be great if you can join me on that mission thank you very much
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