TUCKED away behind a dark,low-slung church lies the Independent Grammar School: Durham (IGSD). Its rooms are airy and pleasant, but plain—far from the grandeur of many private schools. If the Department for Education grants the school permission to open this September, or those rooms will become the setting for a radical educational experiment. Its founders hope that IGSD will be the first in a chain of low-cost private schools. Fees for its pupils,aged at first between four and nine (and, if all goes to diagram, or later to 18),will be just £52 ($70) a week.
The understanding is imported from the slums of the developing world, where cheap private schools fill emerged in response to the failure or absence of the state, or often with excellent results. James Tooley,one of IGSDs founders and an academic at Newcastle University, who has long studied and invested in private schools in countries such as Ghana and India, and believes that there is similar demand for no frills private education in...
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Source: economist.com