M. Bakri Musa
Private Sector Participation in Preschools and Schools
[Fifth of Six Parts]
[In the preceding four parts, I discussed the rationale and benefits of
enhancing private sector participation in education, surveyed the various
models in the rest of world, and summarized the current state of affairs
in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Malaysia. This fifth part
contains my specific prescription for private sector participation at the
pre-schools and schools, while the last (and sixth) part, for tertiary
level.]
Private sector participation at the preschool level is already robust;
there is not much more that can be done to increase that. However, the
glaring deficiencies must be remedied. One, these private preschools
cater only to those who can afford them. No surprise there as they are
profit-making ventures. Two, there is minimal regulatory oversight; it
is strictly a case of buyer (or more correctly, parents) beware.
Private preschools catering to the poor and disadvantaged are
non existent except those few set up by religious and charitable
entities, as well as public social agencies. The government could
increase that number considerably by granting generous subsidies. As we
want to encourage our young to integrate early, these grants should only
be given to those preschools whose pupils reflect the general population.
If the subsidies were generous enough, there would be plenty of takers.
I envisage a chain of brand name preschools set up all over the country
catering to the poor.
The government must regulate these private preschools more
stringently to ensure safety. Such issues as adequacy and safety of the
physical facility, criminal background checks on the staff, and
qualifications of the licensees must be clearly established before these
preschools could be set up. The facilities should also be regularly
inspected to ensure their compliance.
Private Schools
There has been a remarkable increase in private sector participation
worldwide at the school level both in developing as well developed
countries. In resource-challenged Benin, enrolment in private primary
schools increased from 3 to 12 percent from 1990 to 2005, and 8 to 25
percent for secondary schools, reflecting the vast potential for
contributions from the private sector even in a poor country.
Private sector participation can take two forms: on its own,
independent of the government except for regulatory compliance, or in
partnership with the public sector (public-private partnership – PPP).
Both would require an official recognition of the fact that while
education is a public good, the government is not the only entity that
can provide it.
As schools are concerned with the nurturing of young minds –
the future citizens – permits to operate a private school even one free
of government funding should not be granted liberally as if one were
dispensing licenses to sell ice cream. Even operators of ice cream
parlors have to meet certain rules with respect to public health.
Private schools too must be subjected to certain rules not
only with respect to protecting its consumers (students) but also in
serving legitimate national interests. An example of the first would be
to require these schools to post performance bonds such that if they were
to fail, the students would be compensated for their inconvenience and
time loss. Beyond that I do not think the government has any legitimate
right to demand these schools follow the national curriculum or dictate
the teachers they employ.
As for serving the national interest, these schools must
assume their appropriate responsibility of preparing their students to be
citizens of a plural Malaysia. Thus their students must be sufficiently
fluent in our national language, and be familiar with our history,
society, and system of governance. Specifically the school must teach
Malay language every school day and at every level. To prevent such
classes from being a sham, their students' aggregate performance must
match those of government schools. If not, these schools would risk
losing their license.
All the current private schools – international, independent
Chinese, and private religious schools – meet these minimal physical
standards, except perhaps some of the private pondok religious schools in
Kedah and the East Coast. This is evident from the regular news reports
of students succumbing to food poisoning or being burnt to death in dorm
fires.
The greatest demand is for international schools, in part
because they do not follow the national curriculum. This tells us
something of what citizens feel about our national curriculum. These
schools are still few in numbers and expensive. If we liberalize the
setting up of such schools and open up the admissions, many more would be
set up. Then the wonders of the marketplace would take over: Their fees
would come down because of the competition and more Malaysians could
afford them.
As with anything else, we will never know how such a policy
would actually turn out. Thus it would make sense to start out small,
like giving out permits for about 20-25 such schools initially and then
study the results for the first few years.
My hope is that the experiment would be so successful that
there would unanimity to expand it. By this I mean that these schools
would provide quality education, with their students flawlessly fluent in
as well as proud of our national language, and have a faculty and student
body representative of Malaysian society. The poor would also be
sufficiently represented, made possible through scholarships. In short,
they would emulate the successful "private" non-profit American prep
schools.
Of course many things could go wrong. There could be
corruption in the awards of these permits. The schools would then be
expensive, ineffective, and merely a repository for spoilt rich kids who
would be illiterate in our national language and have no appreciation of
our history. That would only generate a backlash.
Or these schools could be set up by extremist groups (secular
and religious) bent on perpetuating their own brand of intolerance or on
proselytizing rather than educating. That too would not be healthy.
Should any of these were to happen, then the policy or its
implementation would have to be reexamined and modified.
Public-Private Partnership
The other avenue for private sector participation would be through a
variety of public-private partnership (PPP). The World Bank recently
analyzed the global experience with PPPs. At one extreme is the
Netherlands where the government is merely the provider of financing,
with the private sector the provider of services. At the other end is
Chile with its extensive use of vouchers. In between we have charter
schools (America), direct subsidies (Quebec), or where private
contractors are engaged to run public schools (America).
Nearly two thirds of Dutch pupils attend private schools,
which can either be fully or partially funded publicly. This model
obviously works for it receives wide support. Dutch students also
consistently score at the top in various international comparisons like
TIMMS.
If such a model were to be adopted locally without any
modification, there would be the inevitable self-segregation based on
class, ethnicity, or religious beliefs. That would not be healthy.
There would also be the question of inequity of access based on
geography, with the good schools in affluent areas and beyond the reach
(physically as well as psychologically) of the poor.
The best for Malaysia would be to have PPP along the concept
of charter schools. Charter schools are fully funded by the state but
run by private (usually non-profit) entities. The state would pay the
school the same amount what it would normally cost for a pupil to attend
government school.
The main barrier to charter schools in America is that such
permits are issued only by the local public school board. That
immediately sets up a conflict of interest because for every charter
school it approves, funds would be taken away from the board's budget.
Further, to maintain their charter these schools have to satisfy the
local school board, which views such schools as unwelcome competitors.
I suggest that Malaysia adopts the charter concept but with
some adaptations. The first is that these charters should be given only
to entities that meet the openly stated criteria put forth by MOE. These
should address the financial and academic requirements, specifically the
qualifications of senior academic officers like the headmaster. He or
she should have a degree from a recognized university and have specified
years of relevant experience. I would also put as a requirement that the
governing board has significant representation from parents and teachers.
The student body of these schools must also reflect Malaysian
society with respect to race and socio-economic class. To minimize
inequity of access based on geography, these schools must also have
sufficient hostel facilities to cater for those who live beyond commuting
distance.
The admission policy too must be fair and transparent. Where
there are more applicants than space, the school must have a fair method
of selection (a lottery for example) to prevent favoritism or corruption.
This would also avoid these schools from skimming the top talents. There
must be exceptions of course, to accommodate the siblings of present
students and children of staff members.
As for the curriculum, the only requirement would be that
these schools teach our national language for one period a day at all
levels. Again as with private schools, the students of these charter
schools must collectively demonstrate competency in Malay comparable to
those attending national schools.
If at any time these schools fail to maintain these standards,
they would be given a specified time (three years, for example) to correct
the deficiencies, or risk losing their charter.
In return such schools would get preferred government funding
and credit for capital projects like new buildings and instituting new
programs, in addition to their per student grants.
Beyond those guidelines these schools would be free to carve
their own path, including the freedom to choose the curriculum and
language of instruction. I venture that if there were to be sufficient
demand from a broad section of Malaysians for a charter school using
Swahili, there will be one.
Again, as with the private school program, I would start
small, limiting such charter schools to about 15 or 20 each for primary
and secondary levels per state. Study the development, and if successful
expand it. I would also allow for the conversion of existing schools into
charter schools upon petition by a majority of the teachers and parents.
Malaysia should also be open to other models of PPP. One
would be to have private entities (local or foreign) run a national
school under a management contract. That would include recruiting the
teachers to designing the curriculum, subject to the same conditions as
charter schools. The difference is that the contractor would not own the
physical facility; the buildings and land would remain government-owned.
Likewise, the government would select the students entering such schools.
My first candidate for such private management would be our
residential schools. I would invite experienced operators locally and
abroad to bid in running such schools. The contract would specify the
goals, like the type of matriculation examinations the students would
sit, as well as the costs.
Imagine the operators of Exeter running Malay College! We
need not go far; we have many existing excellent private schools that
could be encouraged, through proper incentives, to run some of our
residential schools.
Another PPP would be the reverse, where private companies bid
to build the entire school complete with desks, chairs and blackboards to
the government's specifications and then lease it back to the government.
The government would run the school, just like any other government
school. The P3 program of Canada's Nova Scotia province is one such
program. Such a scheme would lighten the strain on the government's
capital budget.
The government, spearheaded by Khazanah, has initiated a PPP
with its Trust Schools scheduled to be operational by 2010. It has
wisely started with a small pilot project.
There are a number of commendable features to the concept,
principally the granting of greater autonomy to the schools and the
possibility of supplemental funding from the sponsoring private entities.
However, this autonomy extends only to administrative matters, and a very
limited one that. For example, the teachers would still remain as civil
servants, and thus the school management would still be unnecessarily
constrained by civil service rules especially in critical matters of
hiring and firing.
From what I can see from the preliminary design, a private
entity would form a non-profit body to run the trust school. So far so
good! Then this non-profit body would engage a for profit "operator" to
actually run the school. This is an unnecessary intermediation, adding
another layer of cost structure (the operator is for profit) and
administrative hurdle. I do not see why the non-profit entity cannot run
the school itself, thus dispensing with the "operator." I can just see
it: the awarding of these contracts to the "operators" would be yet
another source of local corruption and political lobbying. I can predict
who the owners of these for profit operators would be. Yes, companies
associated with the local UMNO chiefs.
More problematic is that these schools will have to follow the
national curriculum. What is at issue is that the national curriculum
itself that is wanting. This critical point is missed by the originators
of the Trust Schools concept. True, these schools are free to add beyond
the national curriculum, but that is a meaningless freedom. The national
curriculum already consumes the entire school day; there is little time
left for anything else.
Similarly, the freedom to prepare students for other
examinations (like GCE or IB) is also a meaningless because these schools
must also prepare their students for national examinations. Imagine a
school trying to prepare its students to sit for the IB as well; it would
be a horror to design the curriculum and train the teachers. This is just
not practical.
Lastly, the trust schools designers have not addressed the
issue of access, specifically equity of access, and increasing racial as
well socio-economic segregation. I would hope that a condition for such
schools must be that their students and teachers broadly reflect the
greater Malaysian society, and that these schools must have adequate
boarding facilities to cater for those who live far away, specifically
those in rural areas.
Truly the opportunities for meaningful private sector
participation in education, either alone or in partnership with the
government, are limitless, bounded only by our creative imaginations and
self-imposed limitations.
There is a great pent-up demand for a school system other than
what is being offered today by our national schools with its hide-bound
culture and outmoded curriculum. We see this in the backlog of
applications to international schools, and more dramatically in the daily
convoy of school buses carrying our young across the causeway in Johor.
It is time we address this desperate need with the help of the private
sector.
Next: Last of Six Parts Private Colleges and Universities
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