Educational apartheid is rising due to increasing number of private school in Pakistan. Private schools are offering a very different level of education but at a price. As a result, rich people access these types of schools and others are pushed to go to (low quality) government schools. In this way, these schools provide a good opportunity and ways to rich to become richer as there exists an increasing tie-up between communication skills and wages.
According to LEAPS Pakistan data it is observed that the language of instruction in government schools is Urdu accompanied with local languages and very minor 15% of English. On the other side private schools use English as a language of instruction along with a little Urdu.
Private schools are at geographically scattered locations as they are located in rich areas. In this context the first nuance is that choice of school may be affected by the distance of school from household.
A very interesting second nuance is that a part of geographical segregation, private schools are not fully composed on the children coming from educated and rich families. Private schools also have children from illiterate and non wealthy families. On the same way, government schools also have children from rich and educated families; says LEAPS survey.
A third nuance is Lack of segmentation along caste (zaat) lines in both private and government schools according to LEAPs’ survey.
Public and private schools thus not have proper segmentation in parental wealth/literacy or caste (zaat). The observed segmented factors are the combination of price- as the poor are less likely to afford heavy fees of private schools. Secondly, the distance factor- as the private school location is farther from poor. Apart of these two factors, private schools systematically not found discriminating against children from various backgrounds.
Price segregation could be addressed through government policy but on the other side, distance/location segregation could be harder to address by such policy. Encouraging more private schools to open rather than trying to close or regulate those already in existence might be the best way of addressing such segregation.
