I conceptualize the public sector response to private competition as a set of interlinked processes in the dissertation. As outlined in the framework depicted in Figure 3.1, I argue that schools need to first experience competitive pressures to decide to respond with some policy actions. Then, the changes in school policies may eventually lead to improvements in school outcomes. Besides the extent of private competition, the school’s responses to competition will additionally depend on a host of constraints and supports, such as their personnel and financial resources, their decision-making control over school policies, and the existing communal, political and bureaucratic environment.
The Experiences of Competition
The quantitative competitive effects literature suggests that competition from choice schools should be measured through geographic proximity indicators and other indicators that show the extent of private school market share in a region. The analysis would require detailed data on growth in private schooling and enrollment trends. The qualitative literature suggests that the experience of competition is additionally determined by a variety of other initial conditions such as school enrollment, district size, and legislation governing school finances, and more subjective factors such as school leadership. Historical perspectives on how public schools have been impacted by competition are also essential to describe the experience of competition in contexts that have had long-term experiences with privatization. Thus, a variety of indicators and approaches need to be triangulated to fully describe the experience of competition.
The Responses to Competition
The literature on school responses suggests that when faced with competition, public schools can decide not to respond, decide to respond with instructional and non-instructional
reforms, or decide to focus on unproductive responses such as improving the school’s exclusivity or gaming the system. Providing a detailed analysis of school response to competition requires detailed data on school policies, when schools made these policy changes, and data on
competition measures to assess if these policies are likely to be a consequence of competition. In contexts that lack longitudinal data from before and after policy changes, it will be highly difficult to conclusively claim that certain policies are a direct cause of private competition. However, the complementary use of stakeholder perspectives, following the qualitative literature, helps strengthen the argument on which policies are likely to be a result of private competition rather than other unobservable reasons.
The Factors that Mediate the Response to Competition
The responses to competition are additionally determined by whether there is capacity to respond, and the school personnel’s expectations of success in overcoming obstructive factors from these responses. In order to be able to provide a detailed account of these factors, one would need information on principal perceptions of the benefit of responding to competition, and the constraints they may face in decision-making. Specially, these mediating factors include the macro-level political and economic environments, societal attitudes towards public schooling, and school-level personnel and financial constraints and relationships with the community.
The Linkages between Outcomes, Competition and Responses
In the competitive effects literature, most of the studies model school outcomes as a function of the competition schools face and control for other school and community
characteristics. The accountability systems literature suggests that one can assess whether key policy changes have had any substantial impact on outcomes by modeling outcomes as a function of policy changes and schooling characteristics. The availability of longitudinal information or the use of instrumental variable strategies would help strengthen the causal inference of such analysis.
Research Questions
The Research Questions are the following:
1. How do public schools experience competition?
i. What is the extent of private competition experienced by public schools in Nepal? ii. What are the other pressures faced by public schools that mediate their experience of
a competitive threat?
iii. How do public school principals view their schools’ experiences with privatization? iv. What are the characteristics of the schools that public schools identify as
competition or as the best schools in the district?
These questions are addressed in Chapter 5. The chapter examines the extent to which public schools experience private competition. It triangulates data from national records of school-level indicators, detailed district-level records on private schooling, a survey of public school
principals, policy documents, and interviews with government officials and school principals.
2. What are they doing in order to respond to competition from private schools?
i. What are the policies that public schools adopt in order to compete with private schools?
ii. Are public schools that experience higher competition more likely to have adopted these school policies than public schools that experience lower competition? These questions are addressed in Chapter 6. The chapter first describes the current school policies in public schools and assesses whether public school policy changes can be attributed to competitive pressures. It primarily utilizes interviews with school principals and government officials and a combined quantitative dataset (a principal survey for competition measures and school policies, linked data on school and community characteristics from the national school- level records). The analysis for Research Question 2(i) is based on descriptive statistics and
interview data. Then, research question 2(ii) assesses whether there are statistically significant differences in terms of policy adoptions between public schools that experience different levels of competition using the combined quantitative dataset.
3. What are the factors that mediate how public schools respond to private competition? i. What are the barriers and supports faced by public schools in instituting reforms and
responding to competition?
ii. Do principal perceptions on the key barriers and supports to reform differ by the extent of private competition faced by the school?
These questions are addressed in Chapter 7, using a two-step mixed methods analysis. The chapter first describes other aspects that mediate school responses after they have decided that they feel enough competitive pressures and feel the need to respond. It also describes the variations and similarities in perceptions on public school constraints among different stakeholders. In doing so, it provides an understanding of the main difficulties that schools encounter in making schooling improvements, and a sense of which of these challenges can be addressed by policies. Then, through research question 3(ii), the chapter provides quantitative analysis of how these constraints and supports vary by the extent of competition faced by the public school. The analysis primarily utilizes interviews with various stakeholders (principals, local-level officials, district-level officials, national-level officials) and perception questions from the principal survey.
4. How are public school actions and their experience of competition linked with their outcomes?
i. Do public schools in higher competition regions have better outcomes (test scores, enrollment) than public schools in low competition regions?
ii. What is the relationship between outcomes (test scores, enrollment) and public school responses that intend to improve those outcomes?
iii. Do localities with higher private competition have larger gaps between public and private school outcomes (test scores, enrollment) than localities with lower private competition?
These questions are addressed in Chapter 8. The chapter utilizes longitudinal data. To address research question 4(i), I assess whether there is a statistically significant difference in schooling outcomes (standardized test scores, low proficiency measure, and high proficiency measure, grade 1 enrollment) between schools that face different levels of competitive pressures. To address research question 4(ii), I analyze whether there is a statistically significant difference in enrollment between schools that have adopted certain policies to have a quick effect on
enrollments, and whether there is a statistically significant difference in test scores between schools that have adopted examination focused policies. To address research question 4(iii), I analyze whether the public school performance relative to the private school performance differs between schools in localities that have different levels of competition. In order to improve causal inference, I utilize fixed effects regressions (for the time-variant competition measure, private market share) and instrumental variable techniques.
Chapter 3 Figures and Tables
CHAPTER 4