Letter to editor – Deccan Chronicle

Check out The Business of Education
by Prof. Shantha Sinha, chairperson, National Commission for Protection
of Child Rights. The statements she make are not new. In fact you will
hear them in any elite educationalist circles across the world. It is
amazing how easily people like Prof Sinha are able to insult the
choices made by parents, poor or otherwise, market, etc. etc. If she
had made any attempts to look for evidence, before making blanket
statements, she would have found that vouchers actually work. Even I
could have sent her a big zip file full of facts and data my colleagues
have put together.

Anyway, my quick letter to editor, not sure if the editor published it or not.

Sir, this refers to The business of education (DC, June 13).
Pretty much everyone I know went to private schools. Are they less of a
citizen? In fact they are able to serve their society and the world
precisely because of the better quality education they received in
private schools. Market competition enables citizens to access superior
goods and services, if they pay. Vouchers, cash transfers, tuition
reimbursement, tax credits etc. are being implemented by left-wing and
right-wing governments from Columbia to Sweden and Brazil to
Bangladesh. Prof Sinha misses the point that these schemes are for
empowering the very marginalised she laments about, so they can access
superior services, provided by the private sector hopefully with a
smile and a thank you, today afforded only to the rich and the middle
class. Poor are moving en mass to private schools as soon as they are a
bit less poor. They know something that the elite don’t seem to respect
- English medium private schools provide their children the best way
out of poverty. Empowered with tax payer funded vouchers, let the poor
choose what is best for them. The elite must stop insulting their
choice and stop hiding behind mythical concepts of universalisation and
inclusive democracy of government schools.

Choice for me, inspection for you

Go to any seminar on education. Usually the speakers are
intellectuals, from the upper or middle class, city bred. The
discussion invariably veer towards state of education for the poor.
Soon people start talking about how bad government run schools are. Not
enough teachers, some places there aren’t any building to begin with,
no separate bathrooms for the girl children, so on and so forth. Right
after the wailing they volunteer with their suggestions.

• We must energise the bureaucracy
• We must encourage the ruling class to find its political will
• We must write a memo to the X (minster, secretary, President of India …)
• The poor, dalit, tribal must perform some rasta roko, dharna, ….
• The village BDO or some other petty government official needs to be empowered
• Government teachers need to be encouraged to a, b, c …
• We are all citizens of this country, those government schools are
  our responsibility. Hence we need to inspect them ourselves and make
  sure they are functioning properly
• We should file a PIL
• Go to Delhi and go on a hunger strike in front of the Human Resource Ministry
• The list of recommendations go on and on.

Now instead of a seminar or conference on education if you were to
attend one on roads, hospitals or PDS, you will pretty much hear the
same recommendations.

Imagine if some of us were foolish enough to take these
recommendations seriously. How many of your waking hours will you spend
inspecting road, ration shops, government hospitals and schools?

Let us step back a bit. These government “services” are funded by
our taxes. We pay taxes for pretty much anything we buy or sell. On
pretty much on any income (especially if you are unlucky like me to be
drawing a salary and left with no avenue to evade taxes). Now my
employer pays my salary for doing work. That too in the employer’s
organisation. Not for inspecting other people’s work. So if I spend my
waking hours inspecting government work, filing RTI, etc. I don’t get
paid. If I don’t get paid, I don’t pay taxes. No taxes, no government
“services”.

Also, what about the people who get paid to do their job? And the
people who get paid to inspect, poke and probe the various government
“services”? Aren’t they getting paid to do all the things we are being
asked to duplicate?

Interestingly, no inspection is required for the goods and services
the speaker, i.e., for people like us – the middle, upper and rich
classer – enjoys. I hardly inspect my children’s school, give the
teacher and the principal a pep talk, inspect their accounting system
or pay scale. I visit it, yes. During one of my rare visits, if I find
one or more of the problems listed above, in my child’s school, what do
I do? I may talk to the manager/principal/headmaster once.

Since I am a patient man, I may explain things to them a second time. “Fix it or else”.

A third time? I take my children and find another school. My money
follows me. Whose lose is it? Mine or the school’s? Finding a new
school may not be easy. Sure. Nothing good in life is easy. But will my
children go uneducated? No!

I don’t have the time or the inclination for rasta roko. I like Mr
Kalam, our President. But I don’t have the time to write to him. Same
goes for the minister, bureaucrats, Supreme Court, PIL lawyers, well
wishers, do-gooders. I like you all. But I can take care of my family.
If I need your help I will ask. But don’t wait for me. Don’t hold your
breath.

Why is that so? Why don’t I need all these powerful, noble well
wishers? Because I have the resources to pay the tuition and rest of
the expenses. So the simple question is: if a poor dalit parent had the
money in her hand, would she need all these patrons and patronising
elite? No!

Why are there plenty of schools where I live. Because there are
plenty of people like me who can pay. Which means there are plenty of
people who have started schools to serve me and people like me.

What is news to a lot of people is that there are plenty of schools,
and increasingly so, around where poor live. Because, as the poor grow
less poor, in fact, the moment the poor is a little bit less poor, they
opt for private services, including private schools.

If the poor have access to the money that the tax payers set aside
to help the poor, they can use that money to access far better services
that the private sector is able to provide. Instead of funding
government services with taxes, empower the poor with it.

(What if the tax payer could give the money directly to the poor
person and get a tax credit? No need to send it to the government and
then redirecting it to the poor with all the leaks in the system. Pay
government for the services like defence that government is supposed to
do.)

Today, I have choice. You, if you are poor, have none. Soon, thanks
to the growing school choice movement in India, this will not be the
case.

For the first time in the history of our society, the poor will be
able to tell both the government and the private service providers,
“You dance to my tune I will give you this money that I have in my
hand. I will tell you how you should dance, when you should, and
quality of your dance. You also have to do it with a smile and a thank
you. If you cannot do that please move on. Next!”

Now wouldn’t that be real empowerment, real liberation for a change?

School Choice Campaign

School Choice Campaign

Fund Students, Not Schools

On
29 January 2007 the Centre for Civil Society launched its School Choice
Campaign. It is a one-year campaign with concrete, measurable goals.
Our nation has given each child the right to education; we must now
make it meaningful by taking it a step further: The Right to education of Choice! Each child and her parent must be empowered so they can truthfully say: My Right, My Choice!

This
is also your opportunity to join the education revolution. Put in your
one year to assure quality education to the poor and secure their and
India’s future. Log on to www.schoolchoice.in and play your part.

Can
poor women (urban, rural or tribal), armed with funds—corporate, bank
or micro-finance—own the school where their children study? Can we
attract entrepreneurs of the calibre like Narayana Murthy to open 200,
may be 2000, schools and replicate the IT revolution in education? Can
venture capital—for profit or philanthropic—help improve the
infrastructure and quality of existing budget private schools around
slums and in villages? Can good teachers of government schools be given
an opportunity to manage schools and improve the quality and reach
millions?

We
feel the answer to these exciting questions is a resounding YES! It is
time to think bold, outside the box of the current education system.

What is School Choice?

As
you know, we at CCS have done considerable amount of research and
advocacy work in the area of education. We have collected a wealth of
data and analysis from around India and the rest of the world. And we
are convinced that quality education for all can be achieved only by
adopting a different strategy: School Choice!

School
choice, particularly for the poor, can be achieved through education
vouchers, cash transfers (like in Bangladesh), or tuition fee
reimbursement schemes (like in Delhi), basically by schemes where funds
follow students and not schools. Let the child’s parent choose the
school. It can be enhanced through broader measures like deregulation
and delicensing of private schools, legalizing for-profit schools, and
microfinance and venture capital for budget private schools. (Today it
is virtually impossible to start a legally recognised school. Also,
since many of the schools for the poor are unrecognised, they cannot
get a bank loan to improve their infrastructure like any other
enterprise).

School
choice can be taken to government schools through decentralization of
decision making and transfer of accountability to local governments, by
tying state grants to enrolment and learning achievements, through
management contracts, and charter schools. The funding for education in
general can be increased by tuition tax credits to individuals and
corporate scholarship tax credit programs.

Goals of the School Choice Campaign

We have set five measurable goals. They
would give you a good idea of the scale and scope of our efforts. By
the end of the campaign, 29 January 2008, we intend to achieve the
following:

1. At least 50% of parents with children in state schools should know the ideas of school choice.

2. All state education ministers and secretaries should be briefed about school choice individually or in groups.

3. All elected representatives
across all levels of the government (Members of Parliament, Legislative
Assemblies, Corporations, and Village Panchayats) should receive
persuasive material on the ideas of school choice and specific ways to
implement them.

4. At least 1912 of the elected representatives should receive a delegation of citizens demanding school choice.

5. Establish or help establish at least 5 projects
(including changes in education policies) that demonstrate the power of
choice in school education. One of the projects would be a private school choice fund that would support at least 9400 students.

Looking Ahead

The
task ahead is not an easy one. But we firmly believe that all of us, by
implementing school choice, can make a serious positive impact in the
lives of millions of children, for generations to come. That thought
and the tremendous encouragement and partnership we have received from
all quarters—dalit and tribal activists, government officials,
politicians, entrepreneurs, and parents and well wishers of poor
children—in the short span of our campaign energise us to march ahead.

All
good campaigns depend on good people, planning and execution. We have
assembled a team of dedicated and competent women and men in New Delhi
and in many states. We have partnered with enthusiastic organisations
and individuals who are now the foot soldiers of the campaign. Our mass
campaign and political outreach is in full swing in many states across
the nation. It is especially heartening to receive overwhelming support
from leaders and organisations representing the marginalised women and
men of our society. Dalit and tribal activists, for example, are
becoming the key leaders of this campaign. They are taking the powerful
message of parental empowerment and choice to communities and elected
representatives.

Our
mass campaign has attracted hundreds of thousands of parents. In New
Delhi we will be providing 400 vouchers to poor children to demonstrate
the power of choice and empowerment. We will unveil similar schemes in
other states. Encouragingly, many government officials have shown
interest in implementing choice based schemes in their states and
cities.

It
has been a discovery process for us too. We have sensed a change in the
thought process of philanthropic organisations and donors. Instead of
charity for the sake of charity, they envision funding projects that
empower people in a scalable and self sustaining manner. Many have
found school choice, with its parent empowering message at its core,
very appealing. Many have or intend to join us in our pilot projects
and mass campaigns.

While
we rejoice our achievements, we are fully aware that this is just the
end of the beginning of the campaign. We have a long and hard, yet
exciting, road ahead. Join our campaign. Together let us create an
education system that puts Students First! Together let us make quality education and a good future a reality for millions of our children.

Join the School Choice Campaign!