Across the highway from the Nairobi’s Muthaiga Country Club is Mathare, a slum( 贫民窟 ) that stretches as far as the eye can see. Although Mathare has virtually no services like good streets, it has a sizeable and growing number of classrooms, among them just 4 public schools and as many as 120 private schools. The parents who send their children to these schools in their millions welcome this. But governments, teachers’ unions and non-governmental organizations(NGOs) tend to take the view that private education should be discouraged or heavily regulated. That must change. 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. In India 60% of six- to 14-year-olds cannot read at the level of a child who has finished two years of schooling. 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. In Africa the World Bank found teacher-absenteeism rates of 15-25%. Pakistan recently discovered that it had over 8,000 non-existent state schools, 17% of the total. Powerful teachers’ unions are part of the problem. They often see jobs as hereditary sinecures( 的闲职 ). 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 bit 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. By and large, politicians and educationalists are unenthusiastic. Governments see education as the state’s job. Teachers’ unions dislike private schools because they pay less. NGOs tend to be opposed to the private sector. This attitude harms those whom educationalists are to serve: children. Governments should therefore be asking not how to discourage private education, but how to boost it. The growth of private schools shows: parents’ desire to do the best for their children. Governments that are too disorganised or corrupt to dev this trend should get out of the way.