by Maria Balarin

1. Mapping and exploring the
consequences of the rise of private
education in Perú
María Balarin
Group for the Analysis of
Development (GRADE) - Perú

2. The many faces of educational
privatisation
• Direct: from privately administered public schools
and voucher systems to PPRs
• Indirect: where private schools are allowed to
thrive and public schools loose legitimacy due to
government inaction or inefficiency, inadequate
funding, etc.
• While these two forms of privatisation might
have similar consequences they pose specific
challenges for articulating arguments and
developing policy and other responses.

3. Perú: privatisation by default
• Different from cases in which a market rationale
has been introduced into public education
systems
• Less overt – laissez-faire rather than direct policy
actions seeking to introduce market rationale
• Harder to influence public debate around private
education – more difficult to build solid
arguments
• Consequences are harder to correct (eg. adjusted
voucher systems)

4. The rise of private education in Perú
• 1980s – crisis of the state and of education
– economic collapse, hyperinflation, mounting poverty,
deepening internal violence.
– record low investment levels in ed. and high enrolment
rates; teacher deprofessionalization
• 1990 – Fujimori’s rise to power
– Structural adjustment
– International organizations lead education reforms
– Two early attempts at direct privatisation (Chilean style) –
met strong opposition from union, church, etc.
– Change of policy focus (infrastructure+primary education)

5. The rise of private education in Perú
– 1996: 882 Decree for “Promoting Private Investment
in Education”
• Enabled for profit investment in education
• Flexible and light requirements for opening schools and HE
institutions
• Apparently more directed towards HE sector
• Strong impact on school education
• Marked lack of regulatory mechanisms
– Throughout the 1990s and 2000s public investment
in education remained low

6. Latin America: Public sector education spending
as % of GDP (2006-2008)
Source: ECLAC

7. Public spending per primary &
secondary school student – 1998/2008
Source: ECLAC

8. The rise of private education in Perú
– Learning results remained low in the public education
system as compared to the private
– Other internal inefficiencies (school failure and dropout
rates) remained high
– Reform attempts – teacher training models, learnercentred education, curriculum change, decentralization –
have failed to deliver improvements in quality
– Not only because of low investment but also because of
of lack of governance capacity, radical discontinuities in
education policies, teacher deprofessionalization, etc.
– Public education has become an education for the poor –
an ‘educational apartheid’?

9. The rise of private education in Perú
• At the same time, with the doors opened by
the 882 decree, private education was
growing
• In a country of 30.5 million, Lima, the capital
city, is home to 8.5 million (one third of the
population)
• …

10. Enrolment rates in primary and secondary public
and private education in Metropolitan Lima
80.0%
69.9%
67.3%
70.0%
57.9%
60.0%
53.0%
50.0%
47.0%
40.0%
42.1%
30.0%
Matrícula Pública EBR
32.7%
30.1%
20.0%
Matrícula Privada EBR
10.0%
0.0%
1998
2003
2009
Source: INEI - Perú en Números (personal
elaboration)
2012

11. Perú: national public/private
enrolment rates
90.0%
80.0%
86.0%
85.6%
84.8%
83.9%
81.3%
79.4%
70.0%
77.9%
76.2%
60.0%
Matrícula
Pública EBR
50.0%
Matrícula
Privada EBR
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
14.0%
14.4%
15.2%
16.1%
18.7%
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
20.6%
22.1%
2007
2009
23.8%
10.0%
0.0%
Source: INEI - Perú en Números (personal
elaboration)
2011

12. Private/public enrolment rates in the poorest
and more densely populated districts in
Metropolitan Lima (2012)
80.0%
70.0%
70.0%
60.4%
58.8%
60.0%
62.2%
60.8%
58.2%
53.6%
52.1%
50.0%
55.7%
47.9%
41.2%
46.4%
39.6%
40.0%
44.3%
37.8%
41.8%
Public school
enrollment
39.2%
Private school
enrollment
30.0%
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
Ventanilla
Puente Piedra
Carabayllo
San Juan de
Lurigancho
Lurigancho
Ate
Pachacamac Villa María del
Triunfo
Source: INEI - Perú en Números (personal
elaboration)
Villa el
Salvador

13. The rise of private education in Perú
• The number of private schools and enrolment
figures in private education are growing
throughout the country and for all socioeconomic groups
• Private ed. growth coincides with economic
growth, the rise of emergent middle classes
with more purchasing power
• Private education expansion is moving
towards ‘low-fee private education for the
poor’

14. What private education looks like
• Great variety: from elite to low-fee schools for
the poor; corporate schools; church schools;
one-off initiatives; high-cost to low cost, etc.
• MARKEDLY loose regulatory framework
– Easy to open private schools
– Little or no accountability mechanisms
– Very little influence from Ministry of Ed.
– Usually private schools have outperformed public
schools on national and international assessments
(PISA), but different trends are emerging for schools
in poorer areas

15. What private education looks like
• Little available data and evidence on the reality of
private schools (need to map the phenomenon)
and of the effects of privatisation on public
education (hollowing out; segmentation;
segregation)
• Strong advocacy for private education from
strong interest groups
• Highly (exclusively) ideologised debate with little
evidence (eg. segmentation, segregation) to
support arguments on each side
• Advocates of private education have the stronger
hand

16. The discourse in favour of private
education
“In few fields other than education is private initiative
more necessary and beneficial… Those private
entrepreneurs who decide to invest in education will find
many opportunities to display their entrepreneurial
capacity and will also have the opportunity to see the
enormous benefit entailed by the introduction of a
entrepreneurial attitude in the development of
educational activities.’
(Luis Bustamante Belaúnde – Dean of Universidad
Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas)

17. The discourse in favour of private
education
‘I invite you to dream with your feet on the ground.
In 2021, in the bicentennary of our Republican
Independence:
• private education could enroll no less than 50%
of all children and adolescents
• Apart from directly providing a better education
for one quarter of all Peruvians, the state will
automatically increase its education budget
because if could concentrate more [ie. the same
amount of] resources in a smaller number of
schools and students.’
(Susana Eléspuru – Peruvian Institute of Business
Administration)

18. Citizens’ perceptions of public/ private
education
• But this is also echoed by citizens
• Two consecutive representative polls on
education showed that around 79% of citizens
think private education is better
• Perceptions are supported by national
assessment data which shows that private
schools consistently outperform public schools –
although the most recent assessments showed
that public schools in some poor areas
outperform private ones

19. Reframing the debate on private
education?
• Possible arguments:
– Questions of citizenship building, rights and social
justice = weak in view of current perceptions, the
unexamined idea that private is better, the “Lima
consensus”
– Questions about educational segregation: moving
towards an understanding of how school composition
impacts on children’s learning and what are the
differences in the composition of public and private
schools = unavailability of data on school composition
• Policy choices
– What kinds of actions could bring the private sector
closer to fulfilling public goals?