Public for private: the relationship between public and private school enrollment in the Philippines

To overcome market failures due to externalities or lack of an effective cr edit market, countries often try to improve access to education by providin g more public school places. However, if there is already an active private sector, then some of the public expansion may draw away students who may h ave gone to school anyway. This would attenuate any efficiency gains. This paper estimates this crowding-out effect for the Philippines, a country wit h a large private education sector. Using regional data over the past 10 ye ars, we estimate that the large expansion in the public secondary education sector is negatively associated with private secondary enrollment. The ran ge of the response is around four or five fewer private school students for an increase of 10 public school students. On the other hand, the crowding out effect is insignificant at the primary and tertiary levels. (C) 2001 El sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.