Recent evidence of a substantial link between quality of schooling and individual productivity suggests that, from an economic efficiency perspective, quality aspects of education deserve attention. This paper presents empirical evidence on the relative quality and efficiency of private and government‐funded schools in urban India, using data from Uttar Pradesh. The results suggest that standardizing for home background and controlling for sample selectivity greatly reduces the raw average achievement advantage of private school students over public school students, but does not wipe it out. Private schools' standardized achievement advantage (or better quality) is complemented by their lower unit costs to enable them to be more efficient. The results support much of the existing international evidence on the relative efficiency of private and public school