Experimental Evidence on Public-Private Partnerships in Education

In many developing countries, particularly in rapidly urbanizing cities, families in low-income neighborhoods lack access to high-quality education.

In Bogot, Colombia, a major problem identified in the 1990s was that many of the poorest children in the city were not attending school; and, of those that were, nearly one third were enrolled in private, unsubsidized schools of variable and usually low quality.

To address this, Bogot introduced a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model in the early 2000s, which authorized private schools to bid on public contracts to operate in underserved areas.

These schools, known as Concession Schools or Schools in Administration (SA), are given autonomy in pedagogy design but are held accountable to universal academic and administrative performance standards.

A prior quasi-experimental study found that SA schools improved students cognitive performance and socioemotional outcomes, and that operating costs and student drop-out rates were lower, compared to public schools.

To provide more rigorous evidence on the SA school model, Vanderbilt University and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Colombia in collaboration with the Secretary of Education of Bogota began a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in 2021 to determine the impact of being offered enrollment via the SA schools admissions lottery on students academic and socioemotional outcomes.

With support from Development Innovation Ventures, the research team will expand the RCT to include an additional student cohort, extend the follow-up period to measure longer-term impacts on students outcomes, and analyze SA schools cost-effectiveness.