Hey guys,
Since working in India for over a year now, I notice a large potential for bridging the vast gap prevalent between the resource-hungry education sector and the resource-rich for-profit sector. Recent changes in India's education industry have started a movement towards this direction. Is it beneficial for students, parents and teachers? How will schools around India be impacted by it? These topics and more are examined in my latest article in the Wall Street Journal: The Privatization of Indian Education (http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/05/21/the-privatization-of-indian-education/).
--
It is difficult to ignore the spicing up that India’s education sector is undergoing. Ubiquitous private coaching centers, front-page ads inviting franchise expansion of schools, and landmark reforms allowing foreign universities to enter India all underscore the changing face of a sector that could best be characterized as lackluster just a few years ago, especially for private entrepreneurs and profit-mongers.
With India’s burgeoning middle-class, mouth-watering demographics and fast-changing government regulation, however, this once boring sector has managed to captivate the attention of capitalists from all corners of the world. From small-town tuition centers to globally renowned universities, from shrewd corporate pundits to leisurely housewives, and from private-equity suits to social-enterprise tweeds, the race to have some sort of stake in the growth of India’s education industry has become almost fashionable.
This year, in particular, has seen a massive inflow of capital and interest into the education sector, with Reliance Equity Advisors’ recent announcement to snap up a 1 billion rupee stake in Pathways Global School, a K-12 education provider; Azim Premji’s decision to invest 2 billion rupees in Manipal Global Education, a education resource provider; and Matrix Advisors’ decision to buy 1 billion rupees into FIIT-JEE, a private coaching provider.
Kapil Sibal, India’s education minister, too, gave an emphatic slap-on-the-back to the sector by comparing its future potential to that of India’s now red-hot telecom sector a decade ago.
While there is no denying the potential upside for investors in India’s education sector, it is worth considering the effect that massive entry of private capital into a traditionally not-for-profit sector can have on the Indian education sector as a whole and especially on parents, students and teachers.
First and foremost, the entry of a greater number of privately managed institutions will automatically translate into greater competition in the education sector, as more organizations compete for a limited number of students. Consequently, schools and colleges will no longer be able to rely on students filling their classrooms term after term, something that is common in high population-density areas with few private schools.
Instead, schools will have to lower fees, improve teaching quality, hire better teachers and use efficient technology as ways of distinguishing themselves from competitors and remaining operational. This is similar to what transpired in India’s telecom sector a few years ago, when private firms slashed costs, improved customer service and emphasized innovation to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
This operational model, which challenges the “recession-proof” tag that educational organizations in India have perpetually had associated with them, will transfer greater power to student and parents, for if a school cannot offer its students a cheaper and better educational experience than the school next door, it is most likely going to shut down.
Even for employees such as teachers, a greater sense of competition among educational organizations could spell better payment terms, training facilities and employment benefits. This is because the quality of teachers and education administrators will determine the success or failure of a school. Like it is for for-profit corporations, talent will be a rare resource and one which educational organizations are willing to invest in more intently.
Another benefit of the growing influence of private investments in the education sector is likely to be the bridging of the large gap dividing the resourceful private sector from the resource hungry education sector. As it stands today, education-focused organizations are largely cut-off from the talent, the innovation and the leadership that characterize for-profit companies in India.
Also, the potential for not just better principals or counselors but also for better education entrepreneurs—managers with an expertise in financial analysis and budgeting, strategy planning, human resources management and technology—is tremendous in India’s economy.
This vacuum in education management promises to be filled by private entrepreneurs who can utilize their business training and their vision for education reform more effectively. Corporate best practices like performance-based pay for teachers or inventory management of fixed assets like furniture or computers, which are everyday practices in educational organizations around the world, would also be better planned and implemented under guidance from the for-profit world.
There is only so much funding in India’s capital-starved economy that the government can provide to education ventures like schools and colleges. Eventually, like has been the case for power, infrastructure or telecommunications, financial support from the private sector will be crucial in leading the growth and progress of educational organizations in the country.
For this reason, the influx of greater capital into the sector should translate into its more comprehensive development and help convert the ‘education for all’ motto into reality. For instance, if public finances can target the development of rural education models and private funds can help growth in more urban areas, a greater number of educational institutes can become available for students.
The idea of private-sector investments in the education sector has its share of critics too and, often, for good reason. It can be argued that the private sector has little knowledge on the intricacies of the education sector as most private investors are neither trained in education management or non-profit work. Can such investors really improve the quality of education in India?
There is also the issue of the over-commercialization of education where profit-mongers ignore quality improvement and work on amassing more money. Finally, how easy is it for regulators to keep private institutes in check, ensure quality control and enforce policies?
Despite these drawbacks, the ability of students and parents to make independent decisions, discern education quality and aim for best quality per rupee spent should endear privately sourced investments to India. Also, there is no question that better training for teachers and education managers will have to take center-stage in efforts to improve quality and ensure policy enforcement.
In the end, the fact remains that for all the changes that private capital promises to bring into the education industry, perhaps the most challenging will be altering the age-old mindset of everyday citizens for whom education is simply a non-profit service, not a money-making business.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Sticks and carrots for teachers
Another article from the Wall Street Journal, arguing for performance-based pay in India's schools. As always, will be eager to hear your thoughts and comments, either on this blog or on the WSJ webpage (http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/04/07/sticks-and-carrots-for-teachers/)
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It was no secret, in the high school I attended not too long ago, that our Physics teacher was not very good at what he did. Students tended to miraculously get stomach aches and ailments that saved them from being in his class and even the mightiest were left in shambles after he went through the concept of gravity.
Despite our inability to understand him, however, we did not dare to provide the school authorities with any feedback on his lackluster performance. The consequences for whistle-blowers, if identified by the teacher, were known to be low grades or, even worse, extra classes in Physics. When the year-end exams rolled around, students like me pulled all-nighters cramming their text-books, paid for private tuition or sought the help of seniors who had also faced a similar dilemma. By hook and by crook, the Physics exam was thus cleared, students breathed a sigh of relief, parents smiled and shook hands with teachers and, in an instant, the suffering of one batch of students was bestowed to another.
My friends and I often wondered how it would be possible for teaching to be more student-centric and less focused on year-end results, how schools could foster a culture of innovation instead of mundane rote-learning, how smarter teachers could be brought into classrooms and how educators could be made more accountable for what they taught to students.
Today, after having spent a few years working in the financial services sector and with the memory of my Physics teacher fresh in my mind, I look to the age-old business concept of performance-based compensation and employee feedback in solving many of these challenges. I believe that this principle, which forms the bedrock of corporate governance around the world, can instill our system of education with a new sense of life and purpose.
As an employee at a large investment bank in the U.S., I drew a portion of my compensation through a fixed salary and another significant portion through a performance-based bonus. At the end of every three months, my manager would discuss my performance at the firm over a cup of coffee and highlight the things I was doing right and the things I needed to do better.
Similarly, I would point out what I had learned at the firm, what challenges I had faced and what I would concentrate on over the next three months. This casual but mandatory exercise was played out across the firm, from the most senior executives to the newly hired office assistant. Employees were asked to write feedback on each other, to discuss ideas in groups and to think of doing old things in a new way. As you may have guessed, how well employees fared in each of these areas decided what their performance-based bonus would be at the firm.
As soon as I joined the firm, I noticed a way of doing things that I knew instantly would have worked wonders at the high school I attended. Because employees were judged by their peers and seniors on concrete results instead of on mere ideas, there was a sense of energy and enthusiasm among people to make their work very specific to individual needs. Instead of a sense of competitiveness, a culture of meritocracy ran through the firm and it was not age or rank but quality of work which decided pay. Finally, because higher salaries were on offer for high performers, the firm automatically attracted the best talent and kept out those offering mediocre work and demanding stable salaries.
Such a system of performance-based compensation and teacher feedback makes logical sense to implement in India for a few reasons.
For starters, there are few performance metrics in place today, both in government and private schools, to grade and evaluate school teachers. Most times, the measure of a teacher is by the final results of students, like it was for my Physics teacher. How well a lesson is understood and appreciated by students, how the teacher manages to introduce a spirit of innovation into an otherwise complex topic and how the teacher responds to student-specific concerns are questions that are seldom asked, let alone answered. Thus, instead of someone who fine-tunes his teaching style to better mold his students, a teacher often resembles a worker in an assembly line who jams new data into students’ minds and bids them farewell.
A well-implemented feedback and compensation system, where teachers are critically evaluated by parents, peers and school leaders, would help in making teaching more student-centric and less mechanical. This will benefit not just students, who will suddenly find their classes more interesting and relevant, but also teachers, who will be able to communicate and interact with students more effectively.
Next, our schools desperately long for a culture of meritocracy, where it is not the age of a teacher or the years of employment with a school which determine seniority or pay; but rather, factors like quality of teaching, attendance record, leadership skills and adaptability. A setting where high-performers are paid higher salaries not only sets the tone for teachers to over-perform everyday but also emphasizes a school’s commitment towards rewarding such performance. Like it was at my old job, such a setting also attracts talented and motivated employees, who promise better work for better pay.
In an age where consumers can provide instantaneous feedback on the taste of their toothpaste or the service staff of their local bank, it seems odd that a factor as crucial as the quality of education is left in the vacuum. By mandating performance reviews and teacher feedback, a system of performance-based compensation opens a principal’s doors to hapless students or parents and allows any shortcomings to be addressed promptly and effectively. Providing feedback on teachers or on classes is then not seen as a crime, as it was for my Physics teacher, but encouraged as the right of every student, parent and teacher.
Finally, a well-implemented system of sticks and carrots sets up measures of accountability and transparency in educational institutes, something that is largely lacking at present. When school leaders are obliged to pay bonuses to teachers, there is a natural tendency for them to set up performance appraisals, document teacher track records and deeply scrutinize learning methods. For instance, a school director who is deciding on what bonus to pay his math teacher would like to analyze the teacher’s past performance and look out for any improvements or deterioration in quality of work. This, in turn, would help the director get a keener sense for how the school is doing at the most intricate levels and how students’ learning experiences can further be enhanced.
From my personal experiences so far, I have seen many schools deploy a performance-based compensation system for their top leadership (principals, administrators, managers) but conveniently leave teachers and support staff out of the party. While this half-hearted measure may boost macro-level statistics like number of admissions, year-end results or general discipline, it can never have the same effect that all-staff bonuses can on boosting teaching quality, instilling a culture of meritocracy, opening communication channels with parents and enhancing accountability standards.
Eventually, schools must recognize that even those teaching should be open to learning. Either by stick or by carrot.
--
It was no secret, in the high school I attended not too long ago, that our Physics teacher was not very good at what he did. Students tended to miraculously get stomach aches and ailments that saved them from being in his class and even the mightiest were left in shambles after he went through the concept of gravity.
Despite our inability to understand him, however, we did not dare to provide the school authorities with any feedback on his lackluster performance. The consequences for whistle-blowers, if identified by the teacher, were known to be low grades or, even worse, extra classes in Physics. When the year-end exams rolled around, students like me pulled all-nighters cramming their text-books, paid for private tuition or sought the help of seniors who had also faced a similar dilemma. By hook and by crook, the Physics exam was thus cleared, students breathed a sigh of relief, parents smiled and shook hands with teachers and, in an instant, the suffering of one batch of students was bestowed to another.
My friends and I often wondered how it would be possible for teaching to be more student-centric and less focused on year-end results, how schools could foster a culture of innovation instead of mundane rote-learning, how smarter teachers could be brought into classrooms and how educators could be made more accountable for what they taught to students.
Today, after having spent a few years working in the financial services sector and with the memory of my Physics teacher fresh in my mind, I look to the age-old business concept of performance-based compensation and employee feedback in solving many of these challenges. I believe that this principle, which forms the bedrock of corporate governance around the world, can instill our system of education with a new sense of life and purpose.
As an employee at a large investment bank in the U.S., I drew a portion of my compensation through a fixed salary and another significant portion through a performance-based bonus. At the end of every three months, my manager would discuss my performance at the firm over a cup of coffee and highlight the things I was doing right and the things I needed to do better.
Similarly, I would point out what I had learned at the firm, what challenges I had faced and what I would concentrate on over the next three months. This casual but mandatory exercise was played out across the firm, from the most senior executives to the newly hired office assistant. Employees were asked to write feedback on each other, to discuss ideas in groups and to think of doing old things in a new way. As you may have guessed, how well employees fared in each of these areas decided what their performance-based bonus would be at the firm.
As soon as I joined the firm, I noticed a way of doing things that I knew instantly would have worked wonders at the high school I attended. Because employees were judged by their peers and seniors on concrete results instead of on mere ideas, there was a sense of energy and enthusiasm among people to make their work very specific to individual needs. Instead of a sense of competitiveness, a culture of meritocracy ran through the firm and it was not age or rank but quality of work which decided pay. Finally, because higher salaries were on offer for high performers, the firm automatically attracted the best talent and kept out those offering mediocre work and demanding stable salaries.
Such a system of performance-based compensation and teacher feedback makes logical sense to implement in India for a few reasons.
For starters, there are few performance metrics in place today, both in government and private schools, to grade and evaluate school teachers. Most times, the measure of a teacher is by the final results of students, like it was for my Physics teacher. How well a lesson is understood and appreciated by students, how the teacher manages to introduce a spirit of innovation into an otherwise complex topic and how the teacher responds to student-specific concerns are questions that are seldom asked, let alone answered. Thus, instead of someone who fine-tunes his teaching style to better mold his students, a teacher often resembles a worker in an assembly line who jams new data into students’ minds and bids them farewell.
A well-implemented feedback and compensation system, where teachers are critically evaluated by parents, peers and school leaders, would help in making teaching more student-centric and less mechanical. This will benefit not just students, who will suddenly find their classes more interesting and relevant, but also teachers, who will be able to communicate and interact with students more effectively.
Next, our schools desperately long for a culture of meritocracy, where it is not the age of a teacher or the years of employment with a school which determine seniority or pay; but rather, factors like quality of teaching, attendance record, leadership skills and adaptability. A setting where high-performers are paid higher salaries not only sets the tone for teachers to over-perform everyday but also emphasizes a school’s commitment towards rewarding such performance. Like it was at my old job, such a setting also attracts talented and motivated employees, who promise better work for better pay.
In an age where consumers can provide instantaneous feedback on the taste of their toothpaste or the service staff of their local bank, it seems odd that a factor as crucial as the quality of education is left in the vacuum. By mandating performance reviews and teacher feedback, a system of performance-based compensation opens a principal’s doors to hapless students or parents and allows any shortcomings to be addressed promptly and effectively. Providing feedback on teachers or on classes is then not seen as a crime, as it was for my Physics teacher, but encouraged as the right of every student, parent and teacher.
Finally, a well-implemented system of sticks and carrots sets up measures of accountability and transparency in educational institutes, something that is largely lacking at present. When school leaders are obliged to pay bonuses to teachers, there is a natural tendency for them to set up performance appraisals, document teacher track records and deeply scrutinize learning methods. For instance, a school director who is deciding on what bonus to pay his math teacher would like to analyze the teacher’s past performance and look out for any improvements or deterioration in quality of work. This, in turn, would help the director get a keener sense for how the school is doing at the most intricate levels and how students’ learning experiences can further be enhanced.
From my personal experiences so far, I have seen many schools deploy a performance-based compensation system for their top leadership (principals, administrators, managers) but conveniently leave teachers and support staff out of the party. While this half-hearted measure may boost macro-level statistics like number of admissions, year-end results or general discipline, it can never have the same effect that all-staff bonuses can on boosting teaching quality, instilling a culture of meritocracy, opening communication channels with parents and enhancing accountability standards.
Eventually, schools must recognize that even those teaching should be open to learning. Either by stick or by carrot.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Launch of 'Arunoday', a need-based scholarship program
I am delighted to write to you on the official launch of 'Arunoday' (Sanskrit: the rising sun; the light of life) at Hope Hall Foundation School in New Delhi, where I presently serve as Director.
When I first moved out of India to study in the United States, I noticed an empathic culture of meritocracy and equality in the university I attended and in the schools I taught at as a volunteer. Unlike in India, where money and influence often won students seats in reputed private colleges, there was an abundance of poor but bright, and non-influential but talented, students in schools and universities around me.
In my university, this extraordinary feat was largely possible through merit and need based scholarships, which empowered even the destitute and the downtrodden through a world-class education. If you had a hunger to learn and if you had a demonstrated record for high-performance--I was delighted to notice--you could obtain an education.
This opportunity to empowerment and education is one that 'Arunoday' provides poor but intelligent students in New Delhi, India.
As it stands today—and as you may be aware—children from low-income backgrounds in India either attend poorly-funded but affordable public schools or NGO’s divorced from the mainstream system of education or no school at all. While there are several challenges this poses before an otherwise developing society and country, probably the most severe and heartening of these is the inability for bright, talented but poor students to further their potential and realize their dreams.
Arunoday will provide such children a 100% merit-based scholarship to attend Hope Hall Foundation School, an English medium, co-educational institute affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The scholarship will also sponsor a student's books and uniform fee. In its first year, the scholarship will reach out to about 5-7 students entering Grades 9 or 11 and will commence from April 1, 2010.
We are actively reaching out to low-income families and schools to source students for the program and we are also approaching private donors to sponsor this program. If you know of any students this program can be useful for or if you are keen to invest in and be part of this program, please do reach out to me by commenting on this article.
Look forward to sharing more exciting updates with you on the program soon!
When I first moved out of India to study in the United States, I noticed an empathic culture of meritocracy and equality in the university I attended and in the schools I taught at as a volunteer. Unlike in India, where money and influence often won students seats in reputed private colleges, there was an abundance of poor but bright, and non-influential but talented, students in schools and universities around me.
In my university, this extraordinary feat was largely possible through merit and need based scholarships, which empowered even the destitute and the downtrodden through a world-class education. If you had a hunger to learn and if you had a demonstrated record for high-performance--I was delighted to notice--you could obtain an education.
This opportunity to empowerment and education is one that 'Arunoday' provides poor but intelligent students in New Delhi, India.
As it stands today—and as you may be aware—children from low-income backgrounds in India either attend poorly-funded but affordable public schools or NGO’s divorced from the mainstream system of education or no school at all. While there are several challenges this poses before an otherwise developing society and country, probably the most severe and heartening of these is the inability for bright, talented but poor students to further their potential and realize their dreams.
Arunoday will provide such children a 100% merit-based scholarship to attend Hope Hall Foundation School, an English medium, co-educational institute affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The scholarship will also sponsor a student's books and uniform fee. In its first year, the scholarship will reach out to about 5-7 students entering Grades 9 or 11 and will commence from April 1, 2010.
We are actively reaching out to low-income families and schools to source students for the program and we are also approaching private donors to sponsor this program. If you know of any students this program can be useful for or if you are keen to invest in and be part of this program, please do reach out to me by commenting on this article.
Look forward to sharing more exciting updates with you on the program soon!
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