On the other hand, teacher turnover rates were significantly higher in private schools. Between February and October, around 17 percent of public school teachers had left the school, while nearly 39 percent of private school teachers had left the school. It is possible that control over teacher dismissals allows private schools to enforce higher effort among teachers than public schools. However, due to this and lower salaries, private schools may suffer from unstable teacher tenures which may influence attrition rates and quality of service delivery.

# 6.3 Financing

The information presented in this section, which comes from 2015, is likely to be somewhat outdated, as FBEP – which eliminates all school fees for lower secondary public schools – was introduced in 2016. However, it is instructive because it helps contextualize the education market for secondary schools in Tanzania.

Over half (57 percent) of public schools and nearly all private schools in our 2015 Morogoro data charge tuition. Also, private schools charge higher non-tuition fees than their public school counterparts. These fees cover registration/admission, food, transportation, textbooks, and extracurricular activities. Families of students in private schools pay close to 9.5 times more in nontuition fees at the pre-primary/primary level and 2.1 times more at the secondary level ( **Table 3** ). However, based on self-reported data, nearly 65 percent of private schools claim to provide scholarships to marginalized students, compared to 17 percent of public schools. This number stands at 53 percent at the pre-primary/ primary level and 74 percent at the secondary level for private schools.

While private schools do not receive government funding, they appear to be financially sustainable. Nearly, 69 percent of private schools own the land on which the school resides and 71 percent own the school building. Of those which do not own the school building, only 56 percent pay a rent. Only 11 schools reported currently having outstanding debt, credit or loans, and an equal number of private schools reported plans to borrow money in the next year. Based on the 2015 Morogoro data, on average, in both types of schools, outgoing expenses (including registration and approval fees, taxes, recurring expenses) are less than the tuition and non-tuition fees collected.<sup>4</sup> FBEP may change the financial sustainability of public school systems and sharpen the divide between public and private schools, as families of students in private schools pay significantly higher tuition and non-tuition fees.

# 6.4 Student Performance

According to 2015 Morogoro data, there is some evidence that private schools fared better on some national examinations. While schools’ self-reported percentages of students sitting the 2014 PSLE and CSEE exams were higher among public schools, the difference was not statistically significant ( **Table 4** ). Passing rates of the PSLE and CSEE exams, however, were higher among private schools and significantly higher for the PSLE.

Administrative data provided by the National Examination Council of Tanzania (NECTA) on average PSLE marks and CSEE grade point averages (GPA) from 2013 to 2016 were merged with our 2015 Morogoro data. This merge shows that the average PSLE marks were significantly higher among private schools over all four years. One anomaly is that while overall secondary pass rates are higher for private schools compared to public schools, CSEE GPAs, a measure of secondary school success, were lower among private schools in all years except 2014 (see **Table 3** and **Figure 11** ).

> 4 More details on schooling costs in private and public schools can be found in Baum and Cilliers (2018).

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