Why not have a private sector in education?

It is tragic that the same narrative is being perpetuated long after it has been discredited by all objective analysts - the vast majority of children who attend private primary schools are not privileged, but come from what are euphemistically described as disadvantaged backgrounds. The tragedy is in the fact that the logic of the civil servant, of which yours truly is a proud member of that particular tribe, cannot be faulted: when he hears the word "private" he associates it with privilege and advantages that are quite frequently unfair. For this reason, it is almost certain that the nabobs and mandarins of the Ministry of Education will not be reversing course any time soon and ordering that all form one selections be conducted on the basis of merit - and merit - alone, not if they know where their political slice of bread is buttered. In the polarised atmosphere of the campaign for the 2012 or 2013 general elections, it is almost certain that no politician worth his ill-gotten salt is going to allow his mandarins to implement a fair and reasonable solution to the current impasse. Indeed, no politician is going to admit that under his leadership, the quality of Kenyan primary schools has deteriorated to such a state that they are getting creamed by 'private' schools that are no more than four flimsy mabati walls, roof and a two-teacher faculty that is one strong wind away from total disaster.

What the proprietors of private educational institutions have demonstrated is that there is a gap that can be filled by canny investors, and that there is gold amid all the dross that they have to contend with. Granted, many of the private 'schools' are little more than fly-by-night operations taking advantage of desperate parents unsure of the public school system. Looking at the shambolic way with which the Ministry f Education has disbursed funds, opening avenues for rent-seeking and outright theft, for the stakeholders in the sector, it is no surprise that tens of millions of parents are more trusting of quick-fingered, shifty-eyed operators than their own government and are willing to pay a fee to show it. So it is perhaps surprising that the private school system has not taken advantage of this situation to create an entirely private education system, where only the tax man should bother them.

While the bottom of the education system and the top of the system are dominated, increasingly so, by the private sector, it is a crying shame that the secondary school system is almost exclusively the preserve of the state, especially when it comes to elite schools. The national schools system, that has been boosted by the addition of 30 more schools, is usually dominated by the Alliance siblings, the Starehe siblings, Mang'u, the Precious Blood sisters, and every now and then, Lenana. Private secondary schools of note tend to be the exclusive preserve of the fatcats and plutocrats of Kenya, and increasingly, of parents from further afield. Why the private sector has not established private secondary schools that are within the reach of the millions of parents who spend vast amounts to send their children to private primary schools cannot be explained. Perhaps they have crunched the numbers and seen that the costs would surely cripple the parents; but when you consider that publicly funded secondary schools charge quite hefty fees, even in the era of partial subsidies from the government, it begins to look remarkably like the existence of an opportunity.

Musau Ndunda, the Secretary-General of the Kenya National Association of Parents, and his fellow travellers who are fulminating about the unfairness of it all miss this essential fact. Life is not fair and a poor government is always going to make poor choices, and poor compromises. Why they have not agitated for the total liberalisation of the education market, letting the best students flow to the best schools, whether public or private, and paying a price that is set by the market, beats all logic. It is a basic economics fact that the market will allocate capital to the most efficient user of that capital. Government is not efficient. The private sector is. Musau Ndunda and his cohorts should be fighting to ensure that the private sector competes with the likes of Alliance, Mang'u and Precious Blood, ensuring that when it comes to competition for university spots and white-collar jobs, they will not have it easy. Of course, government could shift goal posts again and ensure that only the majority of the mediocre students from public schools find places in the universities.