Despite the substantial growth of private schooling in developing countries in the past three decades,
there has been little attention paid to the question of how public schools are experiencing and
responding to competition in these contexts. To address this research gap, I conduct a competitionfocused
analysis using primary survey data collected from two districts with high private school
market share (Kathmandu and Chitwan) in Nepal. Utilizing descriptive and logistic regression
analysis methods I address the following research questions in this paper: How do public schools
experience private competition, and how do they respond to it? There are two central findings: (i)
measuring competition subjectively may better capture public schools’ proclivity to respond to private
competition with policy changes than using objective measures that capture private sector growth
alone; and (ii) public schools in Nepal are adopting a variety of strategies, especially transitioning
from Nepali (national language) to English medium of instruction, which may be attributable to
private competition and facilitation by the government. The analytical strategy developed in this paper
may provide a feasible roadmap for related analysis for other developing countries.