On the 'low-ness' of fees: how affordable are low-fee private schools?

When the term, ‘low-fee private schooling’ was coined in 2001, there were almost no published studies in the scholarly literature. People spoke of ‘budget schools’, ‘private schools for the poor’, or ‘teaching... [ view full abstract ]

When the term, ‘low-fee private schooling’ was coined in 2001, there were almost no published studies in the scholarly literature. People spoke of ‘budget schools’, ‘private schools for the poor’, or ‘teaching shops’. Technical reports on unrecognised or ‘spontaneous’ forms of private schooling had emerged, but there was no other way to speak of self-financed private schools in developing countries geared to disadvantaged groups.

The initial term was operationalized as a proportion of real daily wage rates for one study in India (Srivastava, 2006). Crucially, the term ‘low-fee’ was not intended to suggest that the fees would be considered ‘low’ by the bottom 20%, but that schools charged tuition fees at a level lower than the more typical elite, high-fee schools at the time. As the sector has grown in the Global South, this distinction has been lost in much of the subsequent research, and many initiatives and studies do not specify what they mean by ‘low-fee’.

This talk will problematise the term and its current usage by focusing on the concept of 'affordability'. Using a multidimensional approach (Kabeer, 2000) I argue that affordability is dynamic. For the most disadvantaged households and daily wage earners, it is linked to insecurities related to seasonal migration for work, health, rising food prices, etc. Furthermore, daily wage earnings are volatile, and most households have more than one child to school. It will present evidence from published studies that the most insecure households cannot afford the 'low' fees charged at these schools.