The IEA Book Club will be hosting a webinar with Professor James Tooley, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, who will be discussing his latest book, ‘Really Good Schools: Global Lessons for High-Calibre, Low-Cost Education’. This virtual event will take place on Tuesday 30^th March from 18:00 – 19:00 BST, and will be chaired by Professor Philip Booth, IEA Senior Fellow and Director of the Vinson Centre for the Public Understanding of Economics and Entrepreneurship at the University of Buckingham.

A distinguished scholar of education and the world’s foremost expert on private, low-cost innovative education, Tooley takes readers to some of the world’s most impoverished communities located in some of the world’s most dangerous places—including India and such war-torn countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Sudan. There, in places where education “experts” fear to tread, Tooley finds thriving private schools that government, multinational NGOs, and even international charity officials deny exist.

Why? Because the very existence of low-cost, high-quality private schools shatters the prevailing myth in the U.S., U.K., and western Europe that, absent government, affordable, high-quality schools for the poor could not exist.

But they do. And they are ubiquitous and in high demand. Founded by unheralded, local educational entrepreneurs, these schools are proving that self-organized education is not just possible but flourishing—often enrolling far more students than “free” government schools do at prices within reach of even the most impoverished families.

This event is exclusive to IEA Book Club members. To find out more about the IEA Book Club, you can visit the link here or alternatively contact the Book Club at bookclub@iea.org.uk