The Role and Impact of Public-Private Partnerships in Education
Education and access to quality education is still a mirage across many developing countries. However, the enrollment rates might have spiked up from 81% to 86%. In African nations, the quality of education remains weak. This is a real concern, and that is why many governments are planning to pursue a P3 or PPP model when seeking a solution.
We may have heard of Public-Private Partnerships in every field. However, when it comes to specific sectors, we may all have our doubts. Every emerging economy keeps on experimenting with new strategies so that the country can grow and make positive impacts on the world. When looking at the education sector, a P3 model has both positive and adverse effects.
Let’s examine the aspects of a P3 in the education sector.
How Private-Public Partnerships are Re-defining the Education sector:
The privatization of education has helped many countries to provide high-quality education to those who can afford to pay for it. However, often this does not help those from the poorest sections of society. This is where the P3 model comes in to bring about a significant impact on educating the population.
Improved Infrastructure: With private funding, governments can improve the school infrastructure. They can equip better lab amenities and even help students from rural areas in the world to get better transportation, facilities, and the necessary tools for learning in the modern world.
Make Students Competitive: Students of these P3 schools are able to compete with students from private schools. Since the quality of education is increased with the addition of private partners, there is not a wide gap between the education provided by the private and public sectors when P3 models are used.
Give Governments better control: Governments can have better control over the administration or the syllabi or even in the recruitment of teachers by remaining a partner in the relationship rather than handing it over to only private parties.
Looking at the negatives, the P3 Model has found some resistance from specific sectors. For instance, those schools pursuing a P3 will oftentimes find governments want to run the support, operational, and management services as opposed to sharing this role with private partners.
There are different types of contracts for improving the infrastructure that governments have with private bodies, and these have been beneficial. Many governments continue to be offering primary and secondary levels of education. However, thanks to the adoption of Public-private partnerships, the overall improvement is visible in the crop of students graduating every year in these countries.
Interested in more P3 insights? Check out some of our other blogs on The History of the P3 Market and What's Next and the Top 5 ways to Align Vision of a PPP. If you want to learn more about how we develop effective strategies for public-private partnerships, reach out to us today to start a conversation.
