The people of Naini were angry. The primary school in their impoverished Himalayan village had just two teachers for more than 110 children in the first through fifth grades. Their kids spent most of the time working on their own. With so many students per teacher, and each teacher working with five grade levels, one father of two boys, farmer Diwan Singh Rawat, asked: ''How is the teacher going to teach?'' Rawat, who supplements his agricultural income by running a small shop that sells biscuits, candies, and cigarettes, says: ''Even if children go for six months to the government school, they don't learn anything.''

Excerpt from Business Week online - International Letter from India: Why India's Poor Pay for Private Schools

Professor James Tooley is an authority on this issue (see my earlier post on private schools for the poor) and has been involved in a two-year research project, titled, "Private Schools Serving the Educational Needs of the Poor: A Global Research and Dissemination Project" funded by an $800,000 Templeton research grant. Through data collection and case studies, Professor Tooley and his research team have been examining educational performance, cost effectiveness and impact on social factors such as crime with regard to government schools. Like the popular microfinance model that has made a global impact in the world of philanthropy, Tooley’s findings suggest that the root causes of poverty can be best addressed when people have a stake in their own educational destiny.

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