For me this is simply a burden of proof argument. Publicly provided, free schooling has been at the heart of the vast majority of successful development stories. Advocates of low cost private provision are asking us to break with the evidence of history and embark on a deeply unproven and risky alternative using public money. The significant burden of proof is on them.

There has been a huge increase across Africa since 2000 in public investment in Education, often spurred by debt relief. This money has led to millions more going to school. Kenya is often used as a proxy for Africa, perhaps because it is so easy to reach for commentators, so I would also like to underline the many other countries in Africa who have made huge strides in educating their children, from Burkina Faso to Mozambique.

We should be celebrating this massive increase in access, and then working even harder to address the quality challenge. This means more than anything more teachers, better paid. Nothing improves education quality more than the quality of the teaching. Yet teacher salaries and conditions are something that donors have constantly sought to attack rather than support. Thank god for debt relief, government action and budget support which has helped redress this.

There are a set of theoretical assumptions in the pro-private argument that are unproven. That choice can be real for poor people. That choice does in fact increase accountability. That willingness to pay is the same as ability to pay, not a reflection of poor parents desperation.

The standards the pro-private lobby hold the public sector to are not applied to the private. Corruption, power and patronage are hardly unique to the public sector for example- ask Bob Diamond. Neither is regressive incidence. Teacher quality is as much of an issue. At the same time a huge burden of regulation is assumed. The same government that cannot apparently provide services due to its inherent and intractable weakness can nevertheless be relied upon to actively monitor and regulate a multiplicity of public providers to ensure that children get quality education.

It really is time to move on from this largely theoretical and ideological view that in essential services private is good, and public bad. Lets get on with rapidly increasing the quality of free public education for the huge numbers of children who are getting to go to school for the first time.

The majority of the growth in school population numbers are being catered for by the private sector. Already over 65% of pre and pry are going Private with the majority low cost ($30 – $60 per term).

When it comes to quality of education and teacher qualitywe are not seeing much difference but a lot more testing to do.

When it comes down to regulation the majority are unapproved seeing approval = taxation and unrealistic requirements like provision of science labs. To my mind we have to get the environment right so quality low cost private schooling can assist in the massive challenge of educating the children of the developing world. It is already happening in a big way – we need to ensure quality education whereever it happens.

Here’s another question. DfID says that it costs poor households an average of £30 a year to send a child to a low-fee school in Kenya. Low fee? This is a country where half of the population is living on under US$1.25 a day. So an average family in an urban slum would need to spend one-fifth of their paltry income to send two kids to school, before paying for books and uniforms.

Justin’s approach would leave poor families facing some stark dilemmas. Which of my kids should I send to school? Do I pay for school costs or for treating a case of malaria?

Sorry, but is this what progressive financing is supposed to look like in the 21st Century.

I think to start from a logic of supposed public failure meaning the only option is that we have to give up and go private is the big problem here. Instead problems in the public sector should lead to pressure to improve public provision. For the poorest people, there is no short cut to making the public sector deliver quality education for all, as the history of all our countries shows. Ten years ago huge numbers of poor kenyan children did not go to school at all. Now they do. The majority of those out of school were girls. Now they get a chance to read and write. But many don’t. (Justin I have to say that these children, and no children should ever be alluded to as ‘garbage’ by the way!). This is clearly an argument for improving the public sector not sidelining it. And the huge pressure to improve quality is because of free primary education, which is now a right not a priviledge.

Where I do agree with Justin is that the UK attitudes to private schooling are having an impact here- but not in the way he suggests. It is directly linked to DFID discovering a new found passion for private schooling. The UK government of the day has a huge ideological predisposition towards this, and the minister and the majority of the goverment all went to high class private school themselves.