Without literacy and numeracy, people are doomed to a life of poverty. Development experts know that. So, too, do parents. Disgusted by corrupt and incompetent public sector provision, many of the world's poorest people are turning to private sector alternatives. This is a fascinating development, on which the world should now build.

Almost everybody knows that governments cannot run factories, farms or shops. But many people still expect them to do a first-rate job of delivering education. They are deluded. Poor parents have realised this already. They have also done something about it, as James Tooley of the university of Newcastle upon Tyne has discovered. He has found that 75 per cent of the schoolchildren in poor urban and peri-urban areas of Lagos State were in private schools, while the proportion in the slums of Hyderabad was not much lower, at 65 per cent.