This article is re-produced with the kind permission of Russell Southwood, Chief Executive of Balancing Act. Browse this week's edition of their excellent newsletter, or consider subscribing.

The holy grail of cheap computers for emerging markets is producing a sub-$100 laptop for education purposes. One Lap Top Per Child, the initiative launched by MIT's tech showman Nicholas Negroponte took a step nearer last week with its first test production run. But it has a competitor in the shape of a Canadian company producing a similar if
more expensive laptop product called Ink. The road to the holy grail is already littered with the failure of the Brazilian Volks and the Indian Simputer. The Volks never made it into production and the Simputer is under-specified and over-priced. It has had low sales in India and its African distributor closed up shop some while ago. Russell Southwood looks to see whether the latest contenders will overcome the scale of challenges involved in succeeding with low-price computing.

(This article continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)

Two new World Bank policy papers have come out recently reporting on the status of public and private schools in Pakistan (via PSD Blog). The reports show that, contrary to most perceptions, the average private school is affordable even to the poor. These reports focus specifically on Pakistan. But according to a paper written by James Tooley, this phenomenon is occurring in schools in India, China and Africa as well:

The accepted wisdom is that private schools serve the privileged; everyone else, especially the poor, requires public school. The poor, so this logic goes, need government assistance if they are to get a good education, which helps explain why, in the United States, many school choice enthusiasts believe that the only way the poor can get the education they deserve is through vouchers or charter schools, proxies for those better private or independent schools, paid for with public funds.

But if we reflect on these beliefs in a foreign context and observe low-income families in underprivileged and developing countries, we find these assumptions lacking: the poor have found remarkably innovative ways of helping themselves, educationally, and in some of the most destitute places on Earth have managed to nurture a large and growing industry of private schools for themselves.

Click "Read More" to read a summary of and links to the World Bank papers.