The Hindu Business Line : Why not education vouchers?

Education vouchers can introduce competition among schools. With the government providing vouchers to students who can use them to pay fees in a school of their choice, institutions will survive only by providing quality education. Rope in the corporate sector, and the scheme can save the economy from short-sighted politicians, says P. V. INDIRESAN.

This year's Human Development Report has been out for sometime now. Like our cricket team, in the case of human development too, in spite of much hype about our rapid progress, we have not done well. In fact, when it comes to basic factors of human development such as education and healthcare, we are doing very badly. Not doing well is bad enough; the fact that no in authority is concerned about it is worse.

Whenever a bad report appears, the Opposition will normally be up in arms. Normally, they use any and every adverse finding to berate the government. That is not happening this time. Nobody in the Opposition has bothered to comment. As far as the Opposition is concerned, the Human Development Report does not exist.

School education wanting

A weekly has come out with a special issue explaining how school education in India is way below the world average. About this complaint too there is deafening silence all around, even among the academics. The academics have an excuse: As school boards insist on rote learning, nothing better can be expected.

Teachers in our government schools are relatively well paid. In the rural areas, they will rank among the rich. According to informed estimates, they skip a quarter of the classes and teach little rest of the time. I once asked the Secretary to Education of a State government, who made the same complaint, why he does not take action against erring teachers. He confessed he could not. If he tried to do so, the teachers will get a local politician to complain to the Minister and will get his orders reversed. If well-paid teachers do not teach, is it not a self-inflicted disease? If so, why do we take bad decisions and suffer?

In the present case, our rulers have two problems on hand: One is to impress the people and the other is to please their supporters. By sustaining rapid economic growth, they will achieve the former. As for the second, they are relying on schemes of reservation of various types. Unfortunately, the two processes are not compatible. Rapid growth needs talented specialists and good education to train them; reservation needs exclusion of many of the most talented, and preferring the less talented. Faced with this dilemma, the rulers have opted for the latter in the hope excluding the most talented will cause less damage.

The problem does not stop there. In the matter of including the less talented, our rulers had two choices. One, get them the best possible education through best available teachers; two, push the exclusion principle further and exclude the best teachers in the hope a degree will be sufficient substitute for learning. The rulers have opted once again for the latter.

Poor grafting

Grafting is a well-known technique in agriculture for improving the quality of the output. When a branch of superior variety is grafted on to a plant of lower quality, the lowly plant produces high-quality fruits. Apparently, our rulers have no lesson to learn from this well-known process: They are grafting second-rate teachers onto students with poor background.

The result is, in the matter of school education, we are among the worst in the world. For two reasons, politically, it does not matter. One, the uneducated can be moulded into vote banks more easily than the educated. Two, less competent teachers make better organisers of vote banks. On the other hand, those who benefit from rapid growth are rarely grateful. How grateful to politicians are those who prosper in the IT industry compared to poor villagers are for a bottle of liquor?

Politicians of all hues are convinced that economic growth is secondary; caste politics is primary. There is next to no possibility that this attitude will change. There is next to no hope that politicians will allow quality in education. As education has become more a business controlled by politicians than service provided by altruistic entrepreneurs, we cannot expect much from educators either. Hence, in its own self-interest, the corporate sector should take the initiative to stem the decline in education.

Experience in the past 15 years has confirmed that competition works. As we have seen in telecommunications and in a host of other products, competition improves quality and simultaneously reduces prices. Competition should help education too similarly.

In the matter of economic growth, our greatest concern is about the relatively few who are required to occupy leadership positions and provide difficult skills. The numbers needed are not large. Current excitement is all about the corporate sector which employs barely 3-4 per cent of the total workforce, no more than a hundred thousand new entrants a year in critical positions. Hence, it is enough if we concentrate our attention on creating a relatively small talent pool.

Then, can, and should, the corporate sector intervene and ensure on its own that enough competent hands and brains will be available to meet its future needs?

Competition among schools

The idea of education vouchers has been going around as a means of introducing competition among schools. In that case, the government does not fund schools directly; instead, it provides vouchers to students who can use them to pay fees in a school of their choice. Once vouchers come into vogue, schools (and teachers) will survive only by attracting students, by providing quality education.

To teachers (and the government) vouchers are an anathema because it transfers powers from their hands into those of parents. It is unlikely that the idea will be accepted if for no reason the government does not want to displease teachers. On the other hand, without causing much umbrage, the corporate sector can give vouchers to a select few, enough in numbers to ensure the required size of talent. Even then, it should be so designed that it will not be rejected the way the government rebuffed private industry when it wanted to fund IITs and IIMs.

Then, consider a scheme where the corporate sector distributes education vouchers (population-wise) among small groups of Village Panchayats (with a similar arrangement for the urban areas too). Each member of the group will compete with the others for the number of vouchers it can distribute to its children on the basis of a test. In turn, the children will be free to use the vouchers in a school of their choice.

Promoting education

Here is a system that introduces competition among panchayats for the patronage of distributing education vouchers, and thereby induces them to promote good education within their domain. The numbers competing are small enough to create zest. (It is the bane of All India or State-wide tests that they are too remote to create local excitement or civic enthusiasm.) It introduces competition among schools also. The system is decentralised and bypasses centralised bureaucracy. That too is good.

Ten per cent of the first year's emoluments of every new entrant to the corporate sector should suffice to support over a million students and help them attend good schools. The scheme will earn the corporate sector much goodwill, at a cost that is no more than what head-hunters charge for finding candidates. The scheme can save the Indian economy from short-sighted politicians. The question is whether the corporate sector has a long enough vision to fill the breach created by politicians.

(The author is a former Director of IIT Madras. Response may be sent to: indiresan@gmail.com)

(This is 188th in the Vision 2020 series. The previous article was published on Nov 3)

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