Слухи о важности государства для образования оказались слишком преувеличены: https://fee.org/articles/how-underground-private-schools-are-outperforming-government-schools-in-developing-nations/ "How Underground Private Schools Are Outperforming Government Schools in Developing Nations The success of entrepreneurs in developing countries at meeting the demand for education is quite impressive, especially when compared to the failures of the government alternative. In a very limited sense, there is private education in the developed world, but private schools are almost always heavily regulated by the government. There is also the issue of compulsory attendance laws. Competition in schooling that is unapproved by government bureaucrats is prohibited since attendance does not qualify as actual “education” in the eyes of the government. Therefore, we lack the means to compare an actual free market in education with government schooling. In underdeveloped nations, however, because societies are much poorer, governments lack the resources to crack down on underground private schools. In his book The Beautiful Tree, James Tooley explored and researched numerous poor countries including India, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and China. He described a recurring theme of government education officials not even being aware of private schools for the poor. Usually, they balked at the idea. Private schooling is generally regarded as a luxury for the rich. In cases where government agents did know of the schools, regulation was rarely enforced. Officials did not always visit schools in poor areas, and when they did, a bribe was enough to get them to leave. Tooley’s research showed low-cost, private, usually unregulated schooling to be a thriving market in many areas. In Nigeria, for instance, Tooley wrote: …we’d found 32 private schools in the shantytown of Makoko, none recognized by the government, and estimated that around 70 percent of schoolchildren in Makoko went to private school. In the poor areas of Lagos State more generally, we’d estimated that 75 percent of all schoolchildren were in private schools, of which only some were registered with the government. Writing of a visit to India, he commented: Everywhere among the little stores and workshops were little private schools! I could see handwritten signs pointing to them even here on the edge of the slums. In rural Gansu, China, Tooley’s team located 586 private schools in the villages. “Officially,” there were only 26 schools in Gansu, all of which were government schools in the larger towns. It was a matter of policy in China to deny these private schools existed. After all, China had already declared that universal public primary school had been achieved. Tooley’s research, therefore, provides unique insight into comparing government schooling with private alternatives. [...] Key Findings The studies that Tooley organized in India, Nigeria, Ghana, and China comparing government schools with both private recognized and unrecognized schools confirmed his experiences on the ground interacting with parents and teachers. Below is his summary of the results: Class sizes were smaller in both types of private schools than in public schools Both types of private schools had higher teacher commitment—in the percentage of teachers teaching when our researchers called unannounced. Only on one quality input—the provision of playgrounds—were government schools superior to both types of private schools across all studies. Children in both types of private schools, in general, scored higher on standardized tests in key curriculum subjects than did children in government schools. The higher standards in private schools were usually maintained for a small fraction of the per-pupil teacher cost in government schools."