Carolina Junemann and Stephen Ball
It was 15 years ago that James Tooley first drew attention to the significant number of very disadvantaged children in developing countries attending private, low fee schools rather than the free (or otherwise cheaper), public alternatives. But even now, nobody knows exactly how many of these so-called Low Fee Private Schools (LFPS) are out there – largely because so many of them remain un-recognised and uncertified by governments.
However, Annual Status of Education (ASER) Pakistan estimates that 59% of children in urban areas and 23% in rural areas were enrolled in private schools in 2012; Pratham estimates that in India 28.3% of children in rural areas were enrolled in private schools in 2012.
Advocates of low fee private schools tend to blame the public sector for their proliferation, arguing that parents are voting with their feet. (more…)

Peter Blatchford
The head of the OECD PISA surveys, Andreas Schleicher, has been called the most powerful man in education. On  the BBC website this month he described 7 big myths about top-performing school systems. Myth number 4 in Schleicher’s list is that small classes raise standards. He argues that “everywhere, teachers, parents and policy makers favour small classes as the key to better and more personalised education.” In contrast, he argues, high performing education systems invest in better teachers and high performing countries (many in East Asia) have large classes – so the size of a school class can’t be important.
Far from being a myth, however, my sense is that the view that class size is unimportant is in fact becoming more and more accepted by many (more…)