It’s what we need to reap our demographic dividend. What’s stopping the Narendra Modi government from launching a full-fledged school education voucher program to usher in choice for parents?
Education vouchers are a straightforward yet critical financial instrument given by the government to parents that can be redeemed at schools of their choice, either private or government, depending on which one they think is performing better. This new system inverts the whole fiscal scenario where the State, instead of funding government schools directly, gives parents the agency to choose, perpetuating a virtuous cycle of schools competing for student admissions.
The genesis of the education voucher idea can be traced back to the iconic paper The Role of Government in Education by Milton Friedman, which later fructified into the path-breaking Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program in the 1990s in the United States. Empirical studies conducted later concluded that using a voucher to attend a private school increased the probability that students would score better, graduate from high school and enroll in college...
Private vs government schools
Opening and running schools in India requires a dozen permissions from government authorities with discretionary powers and rent-seeking.
Currently, India hosts the world’s most extensive schooling system with 25 crore students in 15 lakh schools, of which 11 lakh are government schools concentrated in rural pockets. But the share of students in private schools is increasing rapidly, with 70 percent of students in private schools paying a fee of less than Rs 1,000 — five times cheaper than comparative state funding of government schools.
On top of that, private schools are also subject to stringent regulations and meddling by education bureaucrats for inspections, accreditations, and delayed fee reimbursements for previous years. Dr. Kulbhushan Sharma, National President of the National Independent Schools Alliance, said: “Due to the Covid-19 crisis, schools were closed for more than 18 months, and many private schools were also shut as there has been a drop in student admissions.
In contrast, incompetent government-run schools still thrive, with many teachers’ unions holding the community together financially amidst an extended shutdown. According to a report by a social impact consulting firm FSG, the education voucher model will be the new revenue source for over 2.7 lakh APS that cater to 40 percent of the 80 million school students in the country.
Social change
One unseen long-term effect would be eroding the stratification of class and caste society. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark, “Sab Kuch babu hi karenge?” was a scathing indictment of the deplorable state of bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that is marred by red-tapism. It’s a testimony of faith in the wealth creators and entrepreneurial energies of the private sector and youth leveraging technology via edtech to build new education and business models.
Neglected and beleaguered primary education systems are sacrificed at the cost of building higher education institutions. If the PM truly wants to imbibe federalism and decentralization to make India a ‘Vishwa guru’, we first need to nurture our ‘shishyas’.
He has completed his Masters’s in Digital System Design from Osmania University College of Engineering, Hyderabad.
AGAIN!!!!
Arpit Awasthi is a Writing Fellow with the Fellowship for Freedom in India. He has completed his Masters’s in Digital System Design from Osmania University College of Engineering, Hyderabad.
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