Public choice or quotas in education?
Any public education system that provides fewer resources to the disadvantaged would be failing in its objective of providing opportunities for those most in need to educate themselves out of poverty, says Ashok Khemka
AS PER a recent article in The Economist, parental choice is at the heart of most successful solutions in school education. If there is a critical mass of parents wanting a new school and there is a willing provider, the government should finance it at par with its own state schools. Parents in the Netherlands and Sweden have the right to demand new schools and take government money to any school that satisfies basic government rules. In both countries state funding on education is found to be lower than in Britain, and the results are better too. In the Danish system, the government pays a major proportion of tuition fees at private schools. The
Dutch one in addition provides a weightage of up to 200% in funding to pupils coming from a cultural background with low levels of education or low skill occupations. The existing school system in India entrenches and exacerbates both social and economic inequalities. Should we then abolish fee-paying schools? No, but we should lower the high financial barriers that currently prevent a larger range of families from benefiting from such schools.
Any public education system that caters to excellence amongst those from comparatively privileged backgrounds while providing fewer resources to those from disadvantaged backgrounds would be failing in its central objective of providing opportunities for those most in need to educate themselves out of poverty. The Dutch education system is distinguished by a radical funding formula that explicitly devotes more public resources to children from underprivileged backgrounds. In the Netherlands, each pupil acquires aneducation number on starting school which depends on his cultural and educational background. The numbers determine the amount of funding that the school receives. The more disadvantaged the pupils background, the higher its number and the more funding it brings to the school. It therefore becomes financially attractive for schools to take children from difficult backgrounds.
A case study in Haryana of the relative size and performance of the public and private sectors in school education provides an interesting contrast (All figures in thearticle pertain to the year
2006-07). The size of the sectors means the number of students appearing for the middle (Class 8), matric (Class 10) and senior secondary (Class12) state board examinations. While the numbers of students appearing for the middle examinations are almost equal in both the government and the private sector, the number of students at the matric stage is 50% more in private schools than in government schools. The numbers appearing for the senior secondary
examination is 15% more from private schools than from government ones. There is, however, no significant statistical difference in the composition of students belonging to either SC or BC categories in either the government or private sector. However, the performance of the private schools at all levels middle, matric and senior secondary across all categories of pupils (general, SC, BC), have been significantly higher.
While the percentage of students passing the middle exams from government schools is 55%, the corresponding figure for private schools is 78%. Though the percentage of pass figure for BC category students in both the government and private schools is the same as the overall pass average, the percentage of successful SC category students is almost 10% lower than the overall average.
SIMILARLY, in the matric examinations, the overall pass percentage from government schools is 64%, while it is 76% from private schools. The pass percentage for BC category students from both government and private sector schools is almost equal to the overall pass figures.
However, the pass percentage in the SC category is 9%-10% below the overall average. In the senior secondary examinations, the overall pass figures from the government and private sector schools are 64% and 73% respectively. The pass figures for BC candidates in this case is roughly 1% below the overall pass percentage figures, but that of SC candidates is only 4%-5% below the overall average.
The state governments current or revenue expenditure during the year 2006-07 in the middle classes, that is, from class 1 to 8, of its own schools has been Rs 1,000 crore. This excludes the central grants spent on central education programmes like the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and the District Primary Education Programme. The capital expenditure incurred on land and buildings is in addition to the above expenditure. A nominal amount of Rs 10 crore was given asgrant-in-aid to some aided private schools. The revenue expenditure figures imply that the state government spends Rs 80,000 from the public purse per student passing out successfully from the middle school (excluding central grants and capital expenditure). Assuming an eight-year investment period for each of the students passing out successfully with a middle school certificate from government schools, this implies an expenditure of Rs 830 per month per student for 96 months.
In the secondary and senior secondary classes, or class 9 to 12, the state government incurred an actual current or revenue expenditure of Rs 785 crore during the year. A nominal grant-in-aid of Rs 41 crore was made to some aided private schools. This revenue expenditure translates into a fabulous sum of Rs 32,200 spent annually on each of the students passing out of either the matric or the senior secondary examinations. This means an expenditure of Rs 2,680 per month on each student.
The above average figures, however, hide more than what they reveal. The top 50% of schools in either sector are responsible for contributing almost 75% of the results. It does not require a genius to decipher from these statistics what would work better to unchain our educational system from political and bureaucratic shackles. Is parental choice in schooling through an educational voucher system not desirable then? Why should private schools not be funded at par with state schools from the public purse? Is replication of the Dutch system of per capita top-up funding to students from disadvantaged socio-economic groups not preferable to the endless debates about quotas in jobs and higher education? Only an enlightened debate can help unravel these complex issues. (The author is an IAS officer.
Views are personal.)