© 1999 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
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Can Private School Subsidies Increase Enrollment for the Poor? The Quetta Urban Fellowship Program
Jooseop Kim is senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Peter F. Orazem is with the Department of Economics at Iowa State University, and Harold Alderman is with the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Their e-mail addresses are jskim{at}krivet.re.kr, halderman{at}worldbank.org, and pfo{at}iastate.edu. This study was supported by the research project Impact Evaluation of Education Projects Involving Decentralization and Privatization under RPO 679–18 of the World Bank, supervised by Elizabeth King. The authors are indebted to current and past members of the Balochistan Primary Education Directorate, including Ijaz Ahmed Malik, Mohammed Ishaque, Quararul Ain, and Bill Darnell, for their kind hospitality and research support. They are also grateful to Sultan Mahmood Niazi of the Balochistan Education Foundation and to Brian Spicer and Fahim Akbar of the Balochistan Management Information System for their help in designing and implementing the data collection. Finally, the authors thank their task managers from the South Asia Division, Mae Chu Chang, Guilherme Sedlacek, and Ivar Andersen, for offering many helpful comments and providing an unusually supportive research environment amid ongoing operational support; the referees for making valuable suggestions; and Donna Otto for preparing the final manuscript.
This study evaluates a program designed to stimulate girls' schooling through the creation of private girls' schools in poor urban neighborhoods of Quetta, Pakistan. Enrollment growth in these randomly selected neighborhoods is compared to enrollment growth in otherwise similar neighborhoods that were randomly assigned to a control group. The analysis indicates that the program increased girls' enrollment around 33 percentage points. Boys' enrollment rose as well, partly because boys were allowed to attend the new schools and partly because parents would not send their girls to school without also educating their boys. This outcome suggests that programs targeted at girls can also induce parents to invest more in their boys. The success of the program varied across neighborhoods, although success was not clearly related to the relative wealth of a neighborhood or to parents' level of education. Thus the program offers tremendous promise for increasing enrollment rates in other poor urban areas.
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