Liberalizing the Regulatory Regime to Ensure Quality School Education

Ketan Mukhija LSS, Hyderabad and intern 2006

The existing regulatory framework governing the realm of education in India needs a massive overhaul. Currently, strict and complicated restrictions have been imposed on the entry, expansion and closure of schools. Fee structures, collection of donations, government funding to schools (euphemistically dubbed the grants-in-aid) etc. are excessively regulated. A complete revamp of the prevailing regime is hereby suggested in a two-pronged manner:

1. Do away with the license-permit Raj:

Abolition of the undesirable rigours of the applicable legal regime would essentially entail allowing free entry and exit to both suppliers and customers of education, permitting for-profit educational institutions, passing of the private university bill and checking the doling out of any subsidized land.

2. Autonomy and accountability:

Grant autonomy to existing schools and colleges without reducing financial support, linking government grants with performance for all education institutions, converting departments of education from producers to financiers and supervisors, and transferring of management to local governments, communities, and NGOs.

It is therefore imperative on our part to critically analyze the extant legal and regulatory frameworks, and carve an argument in favour of adopting the scheme of education vouchers, in a systematically planned and meticulous manner.
In its broadest sense, an education voucher involves a payment by the government to parents rather than to the school chosen by the parents of the child being educated. The voucher could be tax-funded and covers most or all of the tuition charge. The main purpose of vouchers is to increase parents’ freedom to choose the school they prefer for their children. The most compelling reason for supporting a voucher program is on grounds of equity and justice and the value of empowering the weakest and disarticulated sections of society by dramatically improving their options with respect to seeking a better future for their children via education. It is worth stressing just how empowering the ability to choose a school with fewer financial constraints can be for the weakest sections of our society and the potential revolution in expectations that it can set in place. Analysis of the existing salary structures in private vis-à-vis government schools, coupled with adequate consideration of related issues like pupil-teacher ratio, teacher-contact time, attendance and drop-out rates, deployment of English as method of instruction and examination, profile of teachers and prevailing structures of ‘incentivization’, among other crucial ones, also constitute significant factors and aspects germane to ensuring better quality school education.

It is evident that nowhere is the failure of our State more tragic than in its failure to provide universal quality school education to its children. The challenge facing us is to showcase to the regulatory authorities, that private unaided schools are doing a better job at educating children at lower cost than the government system and to then provoke thinking about how this phenomenon can be leveraged to improve educational opportunities for all children through adoption of a voucher-based system for education.

(With inputs from Harsh Mukhija)