Low Cost Private Schools: How Low Cost Really Are These?

Introduction

The share of private schools is increasing rapidly in the present-day India. Private schools now account for around 38 per cent of the enrolment at the elementary level, while government schooling is an option that is less preferred than before. During the period 2003 to 2015–2016, the share of government schools in elementary enrolment declined from 80.37 per cent ¹ in 2003 to 58.6 per cent ² in 2016–2017, with private schools getting a commensurately higher share of enrolment. ³

Not only is the private mode of schooling on the rise, low cost private schools (LCPS), many of which have English as medium of instruction, are also mushrooming. Both strands of schools, public and private, are heterogeneous, comprising many types of schools. The private school sector, in particular, varies enormously from schools with classes somehow run from household premises to very well-equipped schools charging high fees (De, Majumdar, Samson, & Noronha, 2002; Noronha & Srivastava, 2013). The LCPS are a part of this subset. In the urban milieu, in particular, there has been a rapid growth of small private sector schools. ⁴

What does a typical low cost private school look like? One such school was located off the main road in Sarita Vihar, Delhi, which can be approached by a very narrow lane. ⁵ At the end of the lane there is a small unmanned gate. Inside the gate there was a little courtyard in front of a small one-storey building with construction of the upper floor going on. A tiny space below the stairs served as the school office where there was a table, two chairs and a computer. From the office-space, where the survey team sat, we got a glimpse inside the school, where there seemed to be a biggish unfurnished newly constructed room. In the room several small children were present and a young woman (ayah) was minding them and a maid was doing the cleaning, fetching water, etc. Later, we were hurriedly shown four classrooms, each crammed with students. None of the classrooms had any natural light or natural ventilation. In the open space in the middle, many small children were sitting; all were wearing uniform and tie and had their school bag and water bottles. Some had large colourful books under their arms.

Multigrade teaching was going on in the classrooms. One classroom with older students had children from three different classes—6, 7 and 8. There were very few children in classes 7 and 8. The teacher looked very young and on being asked, said that she had completed class 12 and was studying in BCom first year. The Principal/owner of the school and her son were the main spokespersons and assured us repeatedly about the quality of teaching they imparted. The Principal also stressed that they are essentially doing a service to the poor people such as labourers, vendors, maids, etc. whose children attend their school, and mentioned how fees are waived for them in case someone is in dire straits and cannot pay.

This was a typical low cost private school in Delhi that we were visiting for a survey on English medium LCPS. Schools such as this one are variously called budget schools, low fee schools or affordable private schools. This is a rapidly growing segment of the educational landscape in India, as official statistics and our survey in Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) confirm. As mentioned at the outset, the share of private schools accounts for 38 per cent of the enrolment at the elementary level, where both private aided and unaided schools are included. This increase has largely been at the cost of enrolment in government schools.

Who are the children who attend such schools? The students are typically from low-income families. In the survey, 326 households were selected purposively in Delhi and Noida together, and the profile shows a high share of drivers and auto-drivers as well as people in sales job (Figure 1). Other major occupations for the respondents in Delhi sample are construction labourers, tailors, helpers, security guard, etc. and for the respondents in Noida, other major occupations are “private job”, helper, security guard, electrician, etc. The sample sites in Delhi were Rajasthani and Priyanka Camps, which are unauthorized colonies situated in Madanpur Khadar in Sarita Vihar. In Noida, the survey was conducted in Barola, an urban village spread over Sector 50 and Sector 78.

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Figure 1.

Source: Primary survey conducted by IHD in 2016.

The study findings show that parents have great enthusiasm for sending their children to school and nearly 100 per cent of the 545 children in the 5–14 age group covered in the survey were attending school. Close to 70 per cent of the respondents in Noida and 38.4 per cent of the respondents in Delhi mentioned school being nearby as the most important reason behind selecting a school for their children. School’s reputation also carries weight, as mentioned by 24.6 per cent of the respondents in Delhi and 19.7 per cent of the respondents in Noida. Other important reasons include relatively low school fees, school teaching English, poor education quality in the alternative of government schools and elder siblings/friends attending the same school.

Cost of Schooling

At the primary level, the majority of the households pay monthly school fees below ₹500, but 25 per cent in Noida and 17.2 per cent in Delhi are paying in the range of ₹500–800 (Figures 2a and 2b). Both the sites have 10 per cent and above share of responses for monthly fees of ₹800 and above.

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Figure 2a.

Source: Primary survey conducted by IHD in 2016.

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Figure 2b.

Source: Primary survey conducted by IHD in 2016.

Parents also have to pay one-time annual charges to the school for items such as water charges, furniture repair, school building and other facilities on which the school might have incurred expenses. We can see from Table 1 that in slight contrast to the pattern of monthly fees, a large share of 67.4 per cent of the Noida sample have expenditure on annual charges in the lowest two brackets, or below ₹1,000, compared with 57.7 per cent for Delhi sample. Around 20.3 per cent of respondents in Delhi show annual expenses of ₹1,201–1,500, while 16.8 per cent in Noida show expenses of ₹1,501–3,000.

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Table 1.

Range of Annual One-time Expenses at the School by Percentage of Respondents (₹)

	Less than ₹800	₹801–1,000	₹1,001–1,200	₹1,201–1,500	₹1,501–3,000	Above ₹3,000	Total
Delhi (%)	36.3	21.4	5.5	20.3	8.2	8.2	100.0
Noida (%)	27.1	40.3	5.1	4.8	16.8	5.9	100.0
Total (%)	31.1	32.4	5.2	11.2	13.4	6.7	100.0

Source: Primary survey conducted by IHD in 2016.

The survey households have to spend a substantial amount on books and uniform annually (Table 2). Of all the respondents, quite a high share of 22.3 per cent on an average indicated expenditure of ₹5,000 and above. The pattern for Delhi and Noida samples is somewhat different, with 27.9 per cent in Delhi showing expenditure less than ₹2,000 compared with 23 per cent for Noida in the lower brackets. But Delhi also has 51.8 per cent share for the highest two expenditure brackets of ₹4,000–5,000 and ₹5,000 and above. The responses for Noida show lower share (34.2%) for the top two brackets and a relatively high share for the middle expenditure levels of ₹3,000–4,000.

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Table 2.

Range of Annual Expenses on Books and Uniform (₹)

	Less than ₹2,000	₹2,000–2,500	₹2,500–3,000	₹3,000–4,000	₹4,001–5,000	Above ₹5,000	Total
Delhi (%)	14.2	13.7	9.1	11.2	23.4	28.4	100.0
Noida (%)	6.6	16.4	18.9	23.8	14.3	19.9	100.0
Total (%)	14.5	14.5	14.1	17.6	17.0	22.3	100.0

Source: Primary survey conducted by IHD in 2016.

Private Tuition

More than half (58.7%) of the total 545 children in the household survey sample were found to be attending private tuition. In Delhi, 68.8 per cent of the children and in Noida half of the children were found to be attending private tuition. The survey and interviews with parents and children revealed that since the parents had a low education level on an average, very few students could access help with studies from any family member. Among those who did not attend private tuition, there were some who could not afford it.

Private tuition is considered here while assessing the expenses on LCPS. The reasons are twofold: (a) as the extent of private tuition shows the schools are clearly not doing a good enough job of educating the children, since so many feel the need to attend private tuition; and (b) as has been seen, many of the private tutors are school teachers, and sometimes even from a child’s own school. Occasionally private tuition is imparted within the school premises.

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Figure 3.

Source: Primary survey conducted by IHD in 2016.

In Delhi, nearly all of the children who attend private tuition classes (95.6%) said that the private tutor they visited did not belong to the school they study in. But in Noida, 18.6 per cent students reported that their private tutor belongs to the school where they study. The tuition classes of 9.2 per cent of the children in Noida are even held inside the school premises after the school hours. Nearly all the children in both sites are going for one tuition class where multiple subjects are taught.

In keeping with the pattern for school fees, the private tuition fees are on an average higher in Noida than in Delhi (Figure 3).

The parents spend on an average ₹250–500 per month in Delhi and ₹400–600 per month in Noida per child on the school fees at the primary level. They also spend around ₹1,000–1,500 for annual charges in school and ₹3,000 and above annually for books and uniform for each child.

Adding all the schooling costs and private tuition costs together, the range of monthly schooling cost including private tuition comes to around ₹650–1,300 per child for Delhi and ₹800–1,400 per child for Noida. Depending on the earnings of a typical family in the sites, with an approximate figure of around ₹8,000–18,000 per month, ⁶ the share in earnings could vary between 7 and 10 per cent. In case two children are attending the primary level, the share could increase considerably even up to 14–20 per cent of the earnings for families at the lower end earning ₹8,000 a month. Even with this very rough approximation, the education in the LCPS cannot really be said “low cost”, especially for the sample low-income families.

Policy Regulation

The government regulation, or the lack of it, over this private schooling segment is another area of concern. Education is a concurrent subject in India, that is, it is governed by both the centre and the state. Regulations for private schools differ from state to state and there is inadequate data on the enforcement of such regulation (Vidhi, 2017). For teachers and staff qualification, the private schools must abide by the Right to Education Act, but the state has decision-making power in many other areas. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, to which one sample site (Noida) belongs, a private school can select its teachers and staff without government involvement as well as decide the salary for its teachers and staff. In the face of this flexibility in regulations for teacher/staff recruitment and in salary-related expenditure, the attractiveness of investment in the LCPS is enhanced, especially with huge demand for this mode of schooling. Again, it has been found that often school teachers also teach privately, which boosts their income. Sometimes school premises are used for private tuition after the school hours, implying further revenue for the school. Above all, as we have seen, these schools charge fees that are not inconsiderable, particularly when seen against the paying capacity of the low-income clientele. Yet despite media attention being often drawn to the fee hikes in elite private schools, the fees of such “budget” schools hardly draw any attention from the media or the policymakers.

Summing Up

We have seen that parents from low-income families are paying disproportionately higher fees to educate their children and many parents have talked about the financial burden for meeting the schooling needs for their children. Apart from poor educational outcome, additional hidden costs borne by these children are many hours spent in unhygienic surroundings, having limited or no access to sports activities and essentially missing out on a holistic development. Yet the aspirations for education for parents are such that they are willing to make sacrifices and/or borrow to meet the same. Since all indications are that the LCPS are not only here to stay but also all set to grow as a segment, will the government pay heed to their problems and bring in the necessary support for those children?