Private School Chains in Chile: Do Better Schools Scale Up?
Authors: Gregory Elacqua, Dante Contreras, Felipe Salazar & Humberto Santos
Cato Institute

Abstract: There is a persistent debate over the role of scale of operations in education. Some argue that school franchises offer educational services more effectively than do small independent schools. Skeptics counter that large, centralized operations create hard-to-manage bureaucracies and foster diseconomies of scale and that small schools are more effective at promoting higher-quality education. If there are policies that would make it easier to replicate the most effective schools, systemwide educational quality could be improved substantially.

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Why choice matters?
- The Financial Express, 03 Mar 2014
Bringing the element of choice into education will make schools accountable to parents and will lead to a more efficient schooling system, where poor performing schools are weeded out due to lack of patronage.

NCERT releases survey on students’ learning ability
- Live Mint & The Wall Street Journal, 28 Feb 2014
New Delhi: Almost two-thirds of the students in Class 3 can read and understand simple text, and do basic math such as addition and subtraction, according to the findings of the national achievement survey (NAS) 2014 by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

Committee to determine fee as per info given on school websites
- The Times of India, 03 Mar 2014
JAIPUR: The fee committee constituted by the Supreme Court will determine the fees of private schools on the basis of what they had mentioned on their websites. The move came after the committee's repeated reminders to schools seeking information failed to evoke any response.

Online system to monitor RTE Act
- The Hindu, 27 Feb 2014
Kerala: Minister for Social Welfare M.K. Muneer on Wednesday inaugurated ‘Nireekshana’, a system to monitor implementation of the Right To Education (RTE) Act, established by the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

Cause for concern: Politicians, educationists, ministers pledge to improve education
- The Express Tribune with the International New York Times, 03 Mar 2014
KARACHI: The shocking findings of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2013 had ultimately prompted the Sindh Education Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro to cry out in alarm: “Let some heads be chopped but we must save Sindh’s education system.” On Saturday, he was speaking at a seminar organised by the Sindh education department at the Regent Plaza to devise a strategy for a way out of the current education crisis in the province.

Building a sustainable economy through education in Asia-Pacific region
- DNA, 02 Mar 2014
The Asia-Pacific region in which India is situated has inherent riches in natural resources such as the oil banks in the Gulf counties, export strength of China, intellectual capital of India, and the research, development and production of the Pacific islands. This area has a projection of 7.5 per cent economic growth compared to 2.6 per cent of USA and 1.7 per cent of the European region. In contradiction, the Asia-Pacific region also accounts for 60 per cent workers in the vulnerable economy, 422 million under the $2-a-day earning mark and 73 per cent of the world’s working poor.

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