Non-State Providers and Public-Private Partnerships in Education For The Poor
Authors: Norman LaRocque, senior education specialist, Southeast Asia Regional Department, Asian Development Bank (ADB), and Sena Lee, consultant, East Asia and Pacific Regional Office, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
UNICEF, 2011

Abstract: Although states are committed to fulfilling the rights of children to access basic services, many developing countries in East Asia and the Pacific face daunting challenges in service delivery. Public spending on services too often does not reach poor and marginalized children, who suffer from high rates of child mortality and low rates of school attendance. When services do reach those in poverty, facilities and resources are often substandard and per-unit consumption costs higher.

As this paper shows, non-state providers (NSPs) play an important role in the delivery of education services, both generally and to the poor. Indeed, at times, private and non-state schools are the only educational option for disadvantaged and marginalized households and communities. Even where there is public provision of education, NSPs offer a useful complement to their public counterparts as a means of improving the overall quality of education delivered and catering to groups with specific educational or other needs. There is considerable scope for increasing non-state participation in the education sector through a variety of innovative mechanisms, including the many forms of public-private partnership (PPP) highlighted in this paper.

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