Writing Test Practice

WRITING TEST PRACTICE
ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY WITH PARAPHRASED QUOTATIONS, IN- TEXT CITATIONS

AND REFERENCES USING APA FORMAT
You may refer to pages 194-212 from your UHL2412 module on APA referencing.
You should spend about 60 minutes on this task.
Write a 5-paragraph argumentative essay on the topic given below:
“Private Education in Developing Countries should be Allowed”

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement.
Write at least 350 words stating reasons and arguments to support your opinion.
Instructions:
1) To support your argument, you are required to include indirect/paraphrased
quotations of the information from ARTICLE 1 and ARTICLE 2 and use in-text
citations using correct APA format.
2) Your indirect quotations should include paraphrasing, summarising and
synthesising.
3) At the end of your essay, use the information in the table for each article to list the
references using correct APA format.
ARTICLE 1
The $1-A-Week Private School
Cross the highway from the lawns of Nairobi’s Muthaiga Country Club is Mathare, a slum that
stretches as far as the eye can see. Although Mathare has virtually no services like paved streets or
sanitation, it has a sizeable and growing number of classrooms. Not because of the state that the slum’s
half-million people have just four public schools but because the private sector has moved in. Mathare
boasts 120 private schools. This pattern is repeated across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
The failure of the state to provide children with a decent education is leading to a burgeoning of
private places, which can cost as little as $1 a week. The parents who send their children to these
schools in their millions welcome this. But governments, teachers’ unions and NGOs tend to take the
view that private education should be discouraged or heavily regulated.
Education in most of the developing world is shocking. Half of children in South Asia and a
third of those in Africa who complete four years of schooling cannot read properly. Most governments
have promised to provide universal primary education and to promote secondary education. But even
when public schools exist, they often fail. In a survey of rural Indian schools, a quarter of teachers
were absent. Powerful teachers’ unions are part of the problem. They often see jobs as hereditary
sinecures, the state education budget as a revenue stream to be milked and any attempt to monitor the
quality of education as an intrusion. The unions can be fearsome enemies, so governments leave them
to run schools in the interests of teachers rather than pupils. The failure of state education, combined
with the shift in emerging economies from farming to jobs that need at least a modicum of education,
has caused a private-school boom. According to the World Bank, across the developing world a fifth
of primary-school pupils are enrolled in private schools, twice as many as 20 years ago. So many private
schools are unregistered that the real figure is likely to be much higher.
Teachers’ unions dislike private schools because they pay less and are harder to organise in.
NGOs tend to be ideologically opposed to the private sector. The boom in private education is
excellent news for them and their countries. First, it is bringing in money not just from parents, but
also from investors, some in search of a profit. Most private schools in the developing world are single
operators that charge a few dollars a month, but chains are now emerging. Chains are a healthy
development because they have reputations to guard. Second, private schools are often better value
for money than state ones. Lastly, private schools are innovative. Since technology has great potential
in education, this could be important. Private schools give teachers tablets linked to a central system
that provides teaching materials and monitors their work. Such robo-teaching may not be ideal, but it
is better than lessons without either materials or monitoring.
Critics of the private sector are right that it has problems. Quality ranges from top-notch
international standard to not much more than cheap child care. But the alternative is often a public
school that is worse or no school at all. Governments should therefore be asking not how to
discourage private education, but how to boost it. Ideally, they would subsidise private schools,
preferably through a voucher which parents could spend at the school of their choice and top up.
They would regulate schools to ensure quality and run public exams to help parents make informed
choices. But governments that cannot run decent public schools may not be able to do these things
well would do better to hand parents’ cash and leave schools alone. Where public exams are corrupt,
donors and NGOs should consider offering reliable tests that will help parents make well-informed
choices and thus drive up standards.
Many poor countries have failed to build enough schools or train enough teachers to keep up
with the growth in their populations. Half have more than 50 school-age children per qualified teacher.
And though quite a few dedicate a big share of their government budgets to education, this is from a
low tax base. NGOs and education activists often oppose the spread of private schools, sometimes
because they fear the poorest will be left behind, but often because of ideology. However, the growth
of private schools is a manifestation of the healthiest of instincts: parents’ desire to do the best for
their children. UNESCO, the UN agency responsible for education, estimates that half of all spending
on education in poor countries comes out of parents’ pockets. Another reason for the developing
world’s boom in private education is that aspirational parents are increasingly seeking alternatives to
dismal state schools. Therefore, governments that are too disorganised or corrupt to foster this trend
should get out of the way.
ARTICLE 1 Information
Corporate Author The Economist

Name of Webpage For-profit education: The $1-a-week school.
Name of Website The Economist
Date Published 1 August 2015
URL https://www.economist.com/news/private-schools-poor-countries
Date Retrieved 31 August 2017
ARTICLE 2
Private Schools for the Poor
It is Republic Day in Mumbai, and an elderly nun addresses 1,000 silent schoolgirls gathered in the
playground of Mary Immaculate Girls' School. If the writers of India's constitution could see the state
of the country today they would weep, she cries, but this school offers hope. Local parents in the tatty
surrounding district agree. They will do almost anything to get their children into the oversubscribed
school, even though it charges its primary pupils $180 a year when the state school across the road is
free. From the Mumbai slums to Nigerian shanty towns and Kenyan mountain villages, tens of millions
of poor children are opting out of the state sector, and their number is burgeoning.
Despite a rapid rise in attendance since 2000, 72m school-age children across the world are
still not in school, half of them in sub-Saharan Africa and a quarter in South and West Asia. The
United Nations reckons it would cost $16 billion a year to get the remaining stragglers into class by
2015—one of its big development goals. Yet a free education is something that many parents will pay
to avoid.
In India, for example, between a quarter and a third of pupils attend private schools, according
to the OECD, a Paris-based think-tank (and others have private tutors). In cities the proportion is
more like 85%, reckons Geeta Kingdon, who conducts research in Mumbai and elsewhere for the
Institute of Education in London. A government decision in 2007 to make primary schooling
compulsory and free boosted private-school numbers. Many parents became disenchanted with state-
school teachers who failed to show up or taught badly—by, for example, failing to correct errors.
Surveys by Pratham, a Mumbai-based charity, suggest that standards in state schools slipped as the
system expanded, whereas in the private sector they have held up.
In China, too, low-fee private schools have emerged, but less because the state schools are bad
than because migrants lose the right to a free state education for their offspring. In Beijing alone some
500,000 migrant children cannot get into a state school. Many are taught in unlicensed private schools
which, unlike their Indian equivalents, tend to be down-at-heel compared with state provision.
In African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda teaching is all too often a sinecure,
not a vocation. Governments have built many new schools, but cannot dismiss even the worst teachers.
Poor instruction by teachers who physically beat their pupils is rife. In private schools the parents are
choosy customers. They care more about the quality of instruction than the snazziness of the premises.
James Tooley of the University of Newcastle has pioneered the study of cheap private schools
in poor countries. He has also set some up. His research, published in 2009 in a book called “The
Beautiful Tree”, often surprised local officials who were unaware such schools
existed. Mr Tooley describes classes in the front rooms of people's houses, often as
an extension of basic child care. Most are run for profit—though even these may
offer free places for orphans and other needy children.
But the private sector faces problems from bossy bureaucrats, especially in
India. It is illegal there to operate a school for profit, so schools that charge fees
must act as charities first and businesses second. The Right to Education Act, which
came into effect in 2010, compels all independent schools to register with the
government on pain of closure (surveys suggest that only about half bother to do
so). The same law also compels private schools to take a quarter of their students
from poor families. Many have resisted, not least because the subsidies that were
supposed to pay for the places have not been forthcoming. Some state courts have
ruled that private-school teachers must have the same high pay as state ones, and
have mandated budget-busting facilities such as large playgrounds and libraries.
Big aid organisations and charities have long been sceptical of the private
schools, arguing that they increase inequality and undermine state provision. Tove
Wang of Save the Children, a charity, doubts if private schools, however plentiful,
can ever cater for the very poorest. She points to research indicating that poor
parents go private only when state schools are dire; if the publicly financed ones
improved, she argues, they would be more popular.
But it remains a striking fact that some of the poorest people in the world
make big sacrifices to pay for education, and get good value for their money. That
is a tribute to diligence and entrepreneurship, just as the failure of the public
schools highlights sloth and greed.
ARTICLE 2 Information
Title of article Private Schools for the Poor

Author Frederick Quinto and Alicia Kerr
Journal Title Global Economic Issues
Year Published 2017
Volume No. 14
Issue No. 2
Pages 63-72

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WRITING TEST PRACTICE

ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY WITH PARAPHRASED QUOTATIONS, IN- TEXT CITATIONS

You should spend about 60 minutes on this task.

Write a 5-paragraph argumentative essay on the topic given below:

“Private Education in Developing Countries should be Allowed”

Corporate Author The Economist

Title of article Private Schools for the Poor

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