Texto - Inglês Instrumental

Doing It Themselves

In India, education is supposed to be free and universal through age 14. In fact, it often doesn’t work out that way. Consider Dhiraj Sharma, the 10-year-old son of a bicycle rickshaw driver in Delhi, who was forced to stay home last year after the local state denied him admission because he didn’t have the right papers – a common problem. So Dhiraj is now applying to a private school. For just $6 a month, the R.S. School offers a much better education than the state, says Dhiraj’s father, Ramesh, complaining that his son “finished class three in government school, and he can’t read anything!”

Such problems have sparked a boom in private schooling throughout the developing world. In 2000, James Tooley, an administrator for Orient Global, a Singapore company that invests in education for the poor, went walking in Hyderabad, India, and was startled to find private schools on virtually every corner. He launched a full-scale study in India, China and Africa, and everywhere, officials and aid agencies told him such schools for the poor didn’t exist. But when his researchers explored the villages and slums, they found that not only did they exist, they were flourishing. “It’s a tremendous success story,” says Tooley. “Entrepreneurs are catering to poor, low-income families, and they’re achieving better than the government at a fraction of the cost.”

(From Doing It Themselves, EDUCATION, NEWSWEEK August 20 / August 27, 2007, page 50.)