Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the relative effectiveness of public and private education in Pakistan. It conducts analysis to argue that school quality is a key factor in the relatively better performance of private schools, and that national figures conceal significant regional differences.

Paper long abstract:

The private sector has played an increasing role in providing education in Pakistan. This study uses econometric analysis to estimate the differences in academic achievement between children attending private and public schools to ascertain whether private schools are providing better education. It uses a large scale primary data set produced by Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Pakistan for 2015 and following the literature, uses test scores to estimate the effect of private schools whilst controlling for individual characteristics. It overcomes the selection bias by including parental education variables to proxy for ability to control for more able children going to private schools. This study identifies and addresses the shortcomings of existing empirical literature by looking at school quality and conducting analysis of the private school effect at the regional level. It finds that by allowing the model to change flexibly across regions, the private school effect varies significantly, as does school quality, and this dilutes the private school effect found for the whole country. It concludes that national level analysis is not representative of all regions in Pakistan and instead future research should focus on school quality at the regional level.