to curate the rapidly emerging numbers war. This committee would oversee the systematic production of quantitative facts and the conduct of experimental trials to provide evidence on:<sup>12</sup>

1. Who provided schooling in the entire system

2. Variation in learning and in particular whether PS attendance _really_ improved Math and Science scores, or was this all due to “positive selection”, whereby those with higher ability were more likely to attend PS in the first place. Note that the emphasis on Math and Science scores as opposed to (say) non-cognitive outcomes, personality traits or civic values was accomplished as a _fait accompli_ by an initial set of studies that focused only on these schooling outcomes.

3. The overall costs of schooling and whether, as had been claimed by the advocates, that schooling costs were lower in PS compared to GS (cost-effectiveness) 4. Whether systems with PS and GS in them exacerbated inequality, as parents who were illiterate and poor would not be able to take advantage of the complex schooling system and would inevitably fall behind.

Four kinds of studies emerged from this unprecedented effort.

<u>Study Type 1: Studies on who provided schooling showed that the typical parent could choose from</u> among many schools. Vastly increased choice was driven by the rapid expansion of PS, and contrary to popular belief, the majority of such schools charged low fees and were used to varying degrees even by the poor. A new nomenclature emerged of elite versus “low cost private schools”; this was useful, since it disabused the elite of the idea that all PS were like the ones that they went to, which was clearly (in their opinion) not good for the illiterate masses in Taleem. Further, unlike what was widely believed in elite circles, Non-Government or NGO schools were only a small fraction of schooling in the country— perhaps less than 2%. Like religious schools (<1%), they were significant only in their absence.<sup>13</sup> <u>Study Type 2: A second set of studies examined variation in learning achievement. The data showed</u> significant variation across schools in the same village. While some of this was driven by the difference between PS and GS, there were actually significant differences even within GS and PS. However, the debate quickly focused on the narrower question of whether PS attendance produced “better” outcomes”.<sup>14</sup> First generation studies showed that children in PS reported higher Math and Science scores, which remained after controlling for a host of parental and child characteristics such as wealth, education, birth-order, age and sex. Second generation studies were increasingly complicated. They showed that children who _switched_ from GS to PS improved their scores more than those who remained

> 12 This mirrors a recent Systematic Review, carried out by the aid agency, DFID. See Day (2014) and a response by Tooley and Longfield (2014).

> 13 Dixon and Tooley have advanced our understanding on the presence and use of private schools in several countries around the world. See for instance, Tooley (2013) on Lagos, Tooley and Longfield (2014a and 2014b) on Liberia and Sierra Leone, Ranjaraju, Tooley and Dixon (2012) from Bihar, India and Tooley and Dixon (2006) on comparisons between Sub-Saharan Africa and India. Pakistan, where most of our work is located, has had a census of private schools in 2001 and 2005, and further census of private schools in the province of Punjab in 2011 (Andrabi, Das and Khwaja 2008).

> 14 Econometrically, studying the differences within public and private schools has proven much harder. In the United States for instance, there is virtually no difference by school type in richer suburbs but some evidence of better private school performance in inner cities (Neal 1998).  While specific geographies as a source of heterogeneity in the public-private school difference are easier to examine, there is little research on how this difference varies with other potential factors.

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