Low-fee private schooling: Challenging an era of education for all and quality provision?

The widespread emergence of what is termed here low-fee private (LFP) schooling in India heralds the need to look beyond international and national rhetoric framed by various Education for All (EFA) targets and campaigns, in order to closely examine emerging private sectors of schooling in economically developing countries facing the problem of increasing educational demand, constrained public budgets, and the deteriorating actual or perceived quality of state education. The significance of the LFP sector is critical, not only because it is uniquely characterised as a private sector of formal provision targeted to a clientele with persistent schooling gaps and low levels of participation, but also because it necessitates an examination of the changing nature of provision for the schooling of disadvantaged groups. Paradoxically, the increased marketisation and privatisation of the schooling arena for disadvantaged groups point to an alteration in the way that schooling is delivered to and accessed by these groups, in an era of increased outward commitment to the EFA goals of access, equity, and quality in schooling provided by the State.