Are private schools only about the money?

We all “know” that anything that is private only exists to earn profits, right?

It is widely assumed that private provision of education would rob it of its moral foundations because “earning profits” would replace the State’s “benevolence.” A visit I made to several Budget Private Schools (BPS) in Seelampur (Delhi) recently challenged this assumption. I saw BPSs working not only toward their own benefit, by earning profits, but also toward the benefit of children who can’t afford other private schools.

Most of the private schools in Seelampur are low cost schools that charge an average monthly fee of Rs. 400 for primary classes and pay teachers an average monthly salary of Rs 2000. Though it might seem easy to charge low fees and pay low salaries to balance the budget and make profits, it is far from reality. These schools struggle every moment to manage operations with the restricted availability of resources to them. The fees that they receive or let’s say hope to receive are often insufficient for them to expand their infrastructure, attract high quality teachers or just to break-even! Yes, I was equally surprised to know that these schools hardly receive 20–25% of their fees at the beginning of the academic session and just hope to receive the rest of it by the end of the year.

What amount of profits do they actually earn? Can the lure of long-run profits (from teaching poor children) be so strong that it motivates them to operate such a difficult and costly business? If not, what drives them to educate these poor children who barely manage to pay them? Could it be that these private schools are not only motivated by profit but by benevolence as well?

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Could it be that private schools are about more than just profit?