Public or private? Determinants of parents’ preschool choice in India

Nowadays children aged between 3 and 6 years are mostly attending one of the two major forms of preschool viz. public and private preschools in India. Even though public preschools are free of any financial cost to the parents, their preference is more towards private preschools. Based on a primary sample of 1369 children from 1369 households, this study explores the determinants of parents’ preschool choices between public and private. Acknowledging the possible sample selection bias in dealing with households of only those kids who have attended a preschool, we deploy Heckman sample selection model as our main regression design. Our results show the choice of a type of preschool heavily depends on parent’s socioeconomic status. Economically better off and educationally more aspirant parents prefer private preschool over public preschool in spite of the fact that the former does not provide any other facilities other than education.