you see it in schooling numbers. So...

the numbers of people going to private primary

has gone up from 10 to 17% over the last 15 years.

Secondary has gone up from nine to 27%

and then if you look in particular countries,

you find ,for instance in China, the big increase

in people going to elite private schools

but also huge business in terms of people getting

online tuition, parents are finding ways to spend money

on the great competition to improve their children's brains.

Yes. So the resurgence is happening for a few different

reasons. One of them is that incomes are going up,

the birthrates are going down.

So in families all over the world there is more money

to spend on each child.

If you look at the Chinese one child policy,

you can get six people, four grandparents,

two parents, all of them willing to invest in the education

of one child. And at the same time,

you've had the whole of the world economy changing so that

there are fewer unskilled jobs everywhere.

Almost all decent jobs require you

to have a qualification of some sort.

So the great advantage of private education

is that it's fantastically good getting children in school.

So in countries where people are moving around a lot

which is most of the developing world

and where populations are growing swiftly

where you get this huge swift urbanization.

Governments just can't keep up!

So you'll get governments like Pakistan which

you know in Punjab which is a massive state struggling with fast growing cities

has partnered up with the private sector to send

poor kids who would otherwise not be getting schooling

at all into private schools.

And they're doing that with over two million kids.

And private schools can also be really really good

because you know often parents are willing to spend

masses of money and you get

a really high quality of education.

It is a dilemma for society.

Governments need to concern themselves about equality

and about social mobility, things that the private sector

discourages rather than encourages.

The problem with private schools is that they do tend

to increase inequality. When parents are allowed to spend

money on their children, they will spend as much as they can,

so obviously rich kids go to better schools.

You see China which is increasingly putting controls

on the expansion in the school's business.

It's clearly pretty uncomfortable about it.

Rather than trying to shut it down,

governments need to be trying to work with it.

Now there is a cost. If you allow the private sector

to operate, you are gonna get a higher level of inequality.

But I think that that is a price worth paying

for the liberty, for the resources, for the better brains,

for the innovation, for the quality of education,

and the breath of education that you get if you allow the private sector to operate.

So I think governments must look

at the private sector as a potential partner,

not as they do in some places as an enemy.