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Abstract
In education systems that support pluralism, students or parents can choose the type of school or university they attend. Given heterogeneity in priorities for what should be taught, education pluralism has a value in itself. It may also boost schooling and learning. The fact that there is heterogeneity is clear, otherwise we would not have different types of schools. What is less clear is the extent to which education systems are pluralistic. Rather than looking at inputs for pluralism such as laws and regulations, this article introduces a measure of education pluralism based on outputs, i.e. enrollment in different types of schools and universities. The normalized education pluralism index is inspired by the literature on market concentration. Estimates are provided based on data for public, private non-Catholic, and Catholic institutions.
Notes
1 As noted by Berner (Citation2019), research suggests the possibility of a positive relationship between education pluralism and performance, but the issue remains debated.
2 Stewart, Seiple, and Hoover (Citation2020) mention a dozen different approaches to pluralism in the literature.
3 For a discussion, see Wodon (Citation2015).
4 See Aparicio Gómez and Tornos Cubillo (Citation2014), and Mabille and Alom (Citation2021).
5 See Baum et al. (Citation2014), which was inspired in part by World Bank (Citation2003). See also Demas and Arcia (Citation2015).
6 See Oxfam (Citation2019) and the Abidjan Principles (Citation2019).
7 Consider one market with two equal-sized providers and another with three equal-sized providers. The normalized HHI is at zero in both, but the second market has less concentration.
8 See for example Wodon (Citation2017a) on the Democratic Republic of Congo and Wodon (Citation2017b) on Uganda.
9 For some countries with majority Muslim populations, lack of further disaggregation may lead to bias since data on Islamic schools are not available. The same applies to Protestant schools.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Quentin Wodon
Quentin Wodon is a Lead Economist at the World Bank. This paper was, however, written in a personal capacity as part of his volunteer work on Catholic education globally. The analysis and views expressed in this paper are those of the author only and may not reflect the views of the World Bank, its Executive Director, or the countries they represent.