There is a big boom in private education all over the world. You see it in schooling numbers, so the numbers of people going to private primary has gone up from 10 to 17% over the last 15 years, secondary has gone up from nine to 27%. And then if you look in particular countries, you find, for instance, in China, the big increase in people going to elite private schools but also huge business in terms of people getting online tuition, parents are finding ways to spend money on the great competition to improve their children's brains.

1. Why is demand for private education booming?

Yes, so the resurgence is happening for a few different reasons. One of them is that incomes are going up, the birthrates are going down. So, in families all over the world, there is more money to spend on each child. If you look at the Chinese one-child policy, you can get six people – four grandparents, two parents – all of them willing to invest in the education of one child. And at the same time, you've had the whole of the world economy changing, so that there are fewer unskilled jobs everywhere. Almost all decent jobs require you to have a qualification of some sort.

2. Can private education benefit society?

So the great advantage of private education is that it's fantastically good getting children in school, so in countries where people are moving around a lot, which is most of the developing world, and where populations are growing swiftly, where you get this huge swift urbanization, governments just can't keep up! So you'll get governments like Pakistan, which you know, in Punjab, which is a massive state struggling with fast-growing cities, has partnered up with…with the private sector to send poor kids who would otherwise not be getting schooling at all into private schools. And they're doing that with over two million kids. 

And private schools can also be really, really good because, you know, often, parents are willing to spend masses of money and you get a really high quality of education.

3. What's the problem with private education?

It is a dilemma for society. Governments need to concern themselves about equality and about social mobility, things that the private sector discourages rather than encourages. The problem with private schools is that they do tend to increase inequality when parents are allowed to spend money on their children, they will spend as much as they can, so obviously rich kids go to better schools.

4. How should government address this?

You see China, which is increasingly putting controls on the expansion in the school's business, it's clearly pretty uncomfortable about it. Rather than trying to shut it down, governments need to be trying to work with it. Now there is a cost, if you allow the private sector to operate, you are gonna get a higher level of inequality. But I think that that is a price worth paying for the liberty, for the resources, for the better brains, for the innovation, for the quality of education, and the breadth of education that you get if you allow the private sector to operate.

So, I think governments must look at the private sector as a potential partner, not as they do in some places as an enemy.

Source：The Economist