Implications of privatization of school education in rural areas of Punjab: Some field level observations

The study revealed that private education is turning a profitable venture, as 67 per cent of the schools are owned by businessmen followed by corporate etc. The proportion of students attending private school 97 per cent is quite high as compared to government school 3 percent which indicated that the population is highly turning towards private education due to a variety of factors. Better infrastructural facilities of the private schools, modern teaching aids, co-curriculum activities and English as a medium of instructions, turned out to be the most attractive factors promoting private education. The logistic regression analysis revealed that occupation and income of the respondents were significantly associated to promote private education. The respondents were found inclined to send their wards in the private schools even sacrificing the mother tongue and other cultural aspects. About one-fourth of the respondents were found spending half of their total income on private education, while 37 and 39 percent spent one third and one-fourth of their income, respectively indicating towards high spending on private education. The respondent families were tended to do more hard work and faced many economic and psychological problems to meet the exorbitant charges of private education.