Introduction
According to The State of Global Poverty Report from UNICEF, the number of 10-year-olds – in low and middle-income countries – who cannot read, write and understand simple text has increased from 57% to 70% between 2019 and 2022. Current school going children are at-risk of losing $21 trillion in potential lifetime earnings, or 17% of today’s GDP. For South Asia, the report predicts that 78 per cent of children lack grade-appropriate learning levels.
The 2022 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) corroborates these findings, indicating that the percentage of grade 3 students capable of reading grade 2 level text declined from 27.3% in 2018 to 20.5% in 2022. For grade 5 students, who could read a grade 2 level text, the proportion dropped from 50.5% in 2018 to 42.8% in 2022. Similar declines have been observed in numeracy: the proportion of grade 3 students who can perform subtraction dropped from 28.2% in 2018 to 25.9% in 2022, and the proportion of grade 5 students who can perform division fell from 27.9% in 2018 to 25.6% in 2022. To tackle this problem of low education outcomes, Prof. Muralidharan proposes a two-fold approach, including focus on private schools and charter schools. I will cover the notes from Professor’s paper on ‘State and Market in Education’ in this blog post.
Private vs. Public Schools: A Comparative Analysis
State-specific studies showed that private schools have better infrastructure, including toilets, electricity, clean drinking water, and computers. This is driven by the higher enrollment rate (4x) of private schools.
The differences were more pronounced in terms of teacher quality and quantity. Private schools have less qualified teachers, who are less likely to have teacher training. They are paid much less than public school teachers (salaries between one sixth to one tenth of government school teacher salaries). Paying lower salaries allows private schools to hire more teachers, allowing a lower pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) than government schools. This also allows lower levels of multigrade teaching (same teacher teaching across multiple grades) for private schools. Although less qualified, private school teachers deliver academic outcomes that match public school outcomes, if not out do them. Furthermore, the management of private schools is more diligent with 2 longer weeks of schooling, longer school days (45 minutes more than government schools), lower teacher absence rates (9% vs. 24%) and a greater likelihood of classes being engaged in active learning during unannounced school visits (51% vs. 34%).
Insights from Voucher-Based Studies
Professor Muralidharan randomly gave vouchers to 1980 students to attend private schools and tracked outcomes over 4 years. The results showed no significant difference between math and Telugu scores between voucher winners and voucher losers. It should, however, be noted that private schools spent much less time teaching math (32% less) and Telugu (40% less) than government schools. They taught other subjects like English, Hindi, science, and social studies in the rest time.
The cost per child for private schools (voucher winners) was one third the per-child spending in government schools. Thus, private schools were more productive than government schools in that they were able to achieve similar test scores in math and language with less spending and less instructional hours. Based on these results, Prof. Muralidharan suggests that privatization of schools can yield better outcomes with the same per-child expenditure as government schools. To achieve visible results, Prof. suggests two methods: improving private schools, and investing in charter schools.
Vouchers and Student Outcomes
When vouchers are given to parents to choose an elite school, results show low to no impact on learning outcomes. In elite schools, studied across the globe, mixed results have been recorded. Some places witnessed no improvement in outcomes for students, while others saw slight improvement. The overall results point to minimal short-term benefits, suggesting that vouchers may not be helpful for elite schools.
For private schools from Milwaukee, faster improvements in math scores were recorded for voucher winners, while reading scores were similar. Furthermore, being offered a voucher increased students’ probability of graduating high school by 12 percentage points. The most positive outcomes for private school vouchers were recorded for the poor. Again, studies have found both results: improvement in learning outcomes and no difference in learning levels.
The Role of Charter Schools
Charter schools are privately run organizations funded by the government. They have their own curriculum, approved by the board. These schools can’t deny admission to students based on selectivity or request additional fees from students. Mostly, charter schools are oversubscribed and allotted spots by lottery. These schools follow a ‘no excuses’ approach that includes longer instructional hours, frequent teacher feedback, intensive tutoring, and so on – inputs aimed at improving learning levels of students.
Based on a survey, students in treatment group from charter schools scored 0.18 standard deviations higher than control group on math and language tests in a year. In Andhra Pradesh, students who opted for vouchers and attended Telugu medium schools did substantially better than government school students.
Prof. Muralidharan shares his views that charter schools were designed to cater to students from low-income communities. The pedagogical practices are designed for students from the community. This helps students perform better in charter schools.
Path Forward: Enhancing Private Schools and Establishing Charter Schools
Based on the findings, Prof. Muralidharan suggests improvement of private schools and setting up of charter schools. We’ll look at both in detail.
Improving Private Schools
Regulating schools based on disclosure as opposed to mandatory compliance can generate positive results. What this means is that rather than having school inspectors shut down schools for variety of reasons, schools should be regulated and asked to share information on inputs like fee hikes, teacher qualifications, etc.
A study finds that teacher training has very little impact on teacher effectiveness in classroom. Instead, having modestly paid teaching assistants can have a high impact on improving early-grade reading and math skills.
Prof. closes the section by explaining how privatization of commodities and services have made them available to the masses in the past – including telephones and air travel. Similar privatization of schools is required for improving learning outcomes in Indian schools.
Charter schools operate on the principle of expanding access to high-quality education rather than redistributing existing resources to economically weaker sections (EWS) of society. Furthermore, their pedagogical approach is tailored to address the specific needs of the communities they serve. Importantly, charter schools boast a significantly lower per-child cost compared to government schools, making them a financially feasible option.
Prof. runs the math to find that a pilot project involving 100 schools would require approximately Rs. 50 crores annually. To put this in perspective, the annual school education budget for Maharashtra is around Rs. 40,000 crores, and for Telangana, it’s around Rs. 12,000 crores.
Conclusion
Prof. Muralidharan’s research underscores the need for a multifaceted approach to enhance educational outcomes in India, combining efforts to strengthen existing private schools with the establishment of innovative charter school initiatives. By leveraging insights from rigorous empirical studies, policymakers can devise evidence-based strategies to address the complex challenges facing the education system and unlock the full potential of India’s youth.
References
[1] Prof. Muralidharan’s paper on ‘State and Market in Education’: https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~kamurali/papers/Working%20Papers/State_and_Market_in_Education%20(Current%20WP).pdf
[2] The Seen and the Unseen Podcast episode on fixing Indian education: https://seenunseen.in/episodes/2020/8/9/episode-185-fixing-indian-education/
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