Executive Summary
Introduction
This report summarises the findings of a rigorous review on the role and impact of philanthropic and religious schools in developing countries. A prior review initially sought to cover all types of non-state schools, but was subsequently separated into two parts.
The first reviewed the role and impact of private schools in developing countries (Day Ashley et al., 2014). The second part – this report –covered other forms of non-state provision. The categorisation of these providers has been driven by the coverage of the literature with a focus on those education providers whose foundational ideology is religious (religious schools) and those founded as philanthropic organisations, such as NGOs, CSOs, etc., (philanthropic schools). A full discussion of these categories is set out in the full report. The two reviews will be synthesised in a final report, which will enable the drawing of comparisons across these types of provision. This review was commissioned by the Department for International Development (DFID), and carried out by a multidisciplinary team of researchers and advisers from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the University of Birmingham and other independent senior researchers.
While there has been a growing interest in the potential contribution of non-state providers of education to meet international educational goals much of the recent debate has focused on low-cost private schools. The potential and implications of other forms of providers have received relatively little attention, despite playing a substantial and important role in a range of developing countries. BRAC, for example, operates over 32,000 primary schools, mainly in Bangladesh. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Catholic schools are the dominant form of education provision, while in South Asia madrasa schools play an important role – serving almost 1.8m students in Bangladesh and with over 16,000 of these schools registered in Pakistan. There are also a range of smaller scale NGO providers targeting apparently neglected populations in rural and urban areas, and our knowledge of the true scale of this provision is limited by poor data collection.
These providers may operate with a very different set of incentives and purposes than those of private schools, affecting how and where they operate as well as their relationship with the state and state education systems. Mapping our existing knowledge and gaps on the role of these providers – how they operate, which communities they serve and the quality and type of education they provide – as well as understandings of how they interact with international actors, the state and state education provision, can therefore provide important insights into if and how they might improve access to quality education for all.