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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.''

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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.

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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.

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Oxfam International has just published a report, "In the Public Interest: Health, Education and Water and Sanitation For All." One can hardly dispute some its assumptions - it's a scandal that people go without basic services, the money is theoretically there to solve problems, aid policies are often misguided, local governments have often proven incapable, incompetent, corrupt and uncommitted to their own citizens' welfare.  But one can argue with their solution set...it's like going back to the future.   

As I read this report, the private sector is seen as the enemy at worst and a wild beast to be caged at best, the profit motive as antithetical to welfare, and more aid as the solution.  The past and current failures of the public sector in the developing world to make headway in solving these problems for billions of people across all regions are acknowledged but then largely ignored.  The Oxfam doctor's prescription is to throw more money at these self-same entities - but more consistently and in larger amounts.  

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It was reported last week that Nicolas Negoponte and Libya reached an agreement to supply 1.2 million of the $100 computers to Libyan schoolchildren for $250 million. I was intrigued by the agreement, the math for which points up one of the problems with the effort - the computer itself may ultimately cost $100, but the infrastructure necessary - pipe, training, deployment, content etc. - takes a lot more money to make the deployment useful in local conditions. Will the Libyan money actually materialize? Who knows?

Myself, I would tend to exercise some caution when dealing with Col. Qaddafi and his bureaucracy. And the extra $130 million is just the down payment. But that is no argument against. It takes money to build infrastructure, and there will be broad benefits when a more robust IT network covers Libya. Rob and I argue whether OLPC is a "real" business. I say that $250 million is money, and even if the government is the buyer, there are lots of companies making lots of money selling things - real and imagined - to governments. Selling to governments is a business model, and if you can jumpstart the production - get the costs down - by selling to them, go for it. As my last post on this topic pointed out, the real benefits of the OLPC may accrue to all of us and the industry in general. We'll see.

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Q. What do young social innovators do for fun?

A. Hang out at StartingBloc’s fall seminar, of course.

About two months ago, while I was waiting for a phenomenally delayed plane at the Dulles Airport, I picked up a copy of the summer edition of Fast Company. Beyond the excellent article about the “Rise of the Aerotropolis”, a short description of StartingBloc caught my eye. It was a fellowship for college students and young professionals who were interested in the intersection of the private sector, sustainability and social change. My first thought was “Wow, this is fantastic, where do I sign up?”

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“The accepted wisdom is wrong,” says James Tooley, winner of the FT’s recent essay contest, as he rips into the prevailing notion that developing country education problems can be solved with more aid. He continues his tirade, attacking development experts that on the one hand prioritize financial assistance for state education but on the other hand, acknowledge that benefits from this aid will have to wait until state education can be reformed and rid of corruption:

“It ignores the reality that poor parents are abandoning public schools en masse, to send their children to “budget” private schools that charge low fees – perhaps one or two dollars per month, affordable even to parents on poverty-line wages.” Tooley hits upon a central element of the BOP hypothesis- that in cases where the government is unable to provide needed services to the poor, the private sector can and should step in.

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Today, the Asia Times published an interesting piece on Nazmi Ilicali, a farmer in Eastern Turkey who has made organic agriculture the centerpiece in the fight against rural poverty. Mr. Ilicali’s efforts have gained him international attention and just last year he was honored by the prestigious Ashoka Entrepreneur Trust. Below I have provided some of the most interesting excerpts from the article:

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In its latest issue, Business Week published an interesting article on the Ramanujan School of Mathematics, a preparatory academy that trains low-income students in the art of test taking: “Every April, some 230,000 Indian youths sharpen their pencils and sit for the intensely competitive entrance exam to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) -- the seven prestigious schools that train India's top-notch engineers and entrepreneurs,” Business Week reports.  “After the grueling six-hour test, only 5,000 students are offered a place in the IITs. Most come from middle-class backgrounds and prepare for the exams through private coaching. But in the past few years, a small group of desperately poor, talented students have made it into the IITs, thanks to the Ramanujan School of Mathematics.”

The Ramanujan School of Mathematics, which is located in Patna, the capital of Bihar, one of India's poorest states, accepts 30 low-income students every year, free of charge.  To gain entrance, students must pass an exam that is, arguably, more difficult than the entrance exam for the IITs.  But once they have been admitted, they are almost guaranteed a spot at one of the IITs.  In its first year, 16 of its 30 students passed the IIT exam.  A year later, that total jumped to 22.  This year, Anand Kumar, founder of the school, boldly predicts that all 30 students will pass.

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Since it was announced in April of last year, MIT's One Laptop per Child initiative has received a great deal of media attention, as well as some healthy skepticism. Questions were raised about the $100 laptop on NextBillion here and here. I hadn't heard much recently about the project until last week when WorldChanging's Ethan Zuckerman posted an excellent first-hand account of his use of the latest prototype.

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