A right to education
The expectations of stakeholders
Last week, we started to discuss how the provision of education appears to have been watered down over time especially after the reform wave hit the public sector. I posed the somewhat controversial question: How can a student, who has failed to master the content of learning at Class One, cope with the more demanding requirements set at Class Two? Sure enough, a very well-respected educator raised the issue of different paces and different types of learning among different types of students (The Sunday Times 17/03/24). This issue is duly recognised and respected. Let us proceed briefly, therefore, into the realm of teaching and learning before moving further down the thesis that we have been developing here.
Education reforms
WHEN political demands, expectations and rhetoric begin to conceptualise the whole education process as a right, public expectations are set and churned up in terms of automatic progress through the system.
This is when the whole process becomes compromised and confused. Taking the case of different paces and different types of learning among different types of students, it is obviously politically expedient to proclaim that everyone should have a right to education. And by extension, everyone should have the right to pass through the system.
This is where the problem arises because it encourages all types of expectations from the various stakeholders involved.
Parents start demanding from and blaming teachers when their children fail to deliver. Government berates teachers when pass rates fluctuate unfavourably.
Children become sulky and uncooperative when they feel that their effort is not being rewarded regardless of a different evaluation of their efforts from their teachers.
Teachers become demoralised and lose their confidence as they attempt to compromise their standards against imaginary unspecified standards that appear to keep changing.
The list goes on and the end result is a watering down of the content, rigour and ultimately quality of education.
Coming back to the political stance on reforms in education, it is commendable to want to have all students going through our schools. But it is a bit more complicated to expect them to pass successfully through the system without providing the necessary support in the infrastructure surrounding education.
By this I mean provision of special teachers for slow learners, etc. I remember when I first learnt about dyslexic people in 1984.
This was during one of our cake/tea sessions at the Saint Mary’s Convent in Nasese with Sister Paula Christine and Sister Rita Marie among others. You see, Sister Paula had taught me at Wairiki Secondary School, and she baked lovely cakes. At that time I was pursuing my BA at USP and always looked forward to those wonderful evenings where we talked about so many things and I learnt so much about the teaching profession and world affairs.
We did not have TV then and access to reading material like Time, Newsweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review among others, was limited.
Later on, I read about dyslexia and developed a healthy respect for the inevitable presence of diversity and special needs among our students. Then we had that unforgettable and highly illuminating Aamir Khan movie called Tare Zameen Pe and dyslexia entered the domain of common knowledge.
Anyway, the point is that cosmetic reforms coupled with high populist expectations without adequate groundwork is never going to deliver on the rhetorical promises of reforms.
This is why in one of my journal articles (1985) I said the model used for public sector reforms is long on promises, but short on delivery.
Let’s move focus once again to international education which is now a multi-billion-dollar industry that has power within the decision-making circles of governments at the highest levels. With the kind of money involved, education has attracted private capital like honeybees to flowers.
Problems, however, arise from the fact that the profit motive often sits uncomfortably with the public service values expected in these institutions of learning.
Private provision of education
There is no denying that public sector reforms have impacted on the education sector in various expected as well as un-prescribed ways.
The removal of controls via deregulation and encouragement of entrepreneurial activity in the sector has led to the need for a cost-profit focus in providers and a quality-integrity focus in policy frameworks.
By definition, deregulation creates a regulatory “void” that is expected to be filled by the market mechanism to ensure proper conduct among players.
There are various assumptions behind this expectation of the market to control the conduct of private providers that have been found wanting in studies on public sector reforms.
The number of providers has to be controlled because education cannot really be viewed as just another commodity — it is a merit good. These are goods or services that are beneficial to individuals and society as a whole, but are under-consumed in a free market.
In other words, education is good for society when it is “consumed” by individuals. However, it cannot be consumed in the same manner by all of society – it has an in-built vetting system that only allows for selective consumption.
Likewise, potential providers of education are carefully evaluated by governments to ensure that they have the necessary resources and knowhow to serve that public need.
Despite this, research shows that there is a constant cat-andmouse game being played between government regulators and private providers of education. This is where the qualityintegrity focus in policy frameworks play a key role.
A research in New Zealand concluded that competition appears to operate very differently in the non-university tertiary sector.
Students are wooed into choosing providers and paying comparative registration fees; with that comes the expectation that qualifications will be acquired as a matter of course.
This places pressure on providers to meet this customer expectation on a sustained basis.
As a result, numerous concerns and complaints continue to arise regarding attempts by providers to beat rather than meet institutional requirements especially in ensuring that the quality of output roughly matches that from universities.
As the shortcomings of market control became increasingly evident, focus shifted to centralising the role of management as a complementary force to ensure that the regulatory void is not exploited in a manner that would have unwanted wider damaging effects.
We will talk later about the role of management in ensuring that the right decisions are made.
Shoddy qualifications
Let us move focus to the prevalence of shoddy qualifications that have resulted from the proliferation of private providers in the education sector.
It needs to be noted that this continues to happen despite the presence of elaborate regulatory frameworks that need to be upgraded constantly.
We now have qualifications that are so vague that it is difficult to understand them. One can get these from a plethora of sources all over the world.
Quite often, it is difficult to check the bonafides of the provider. The offerings even go as far as doctorates.
We can now acquire a PhD in even less than year and declare ourselves as geniuses. Another little-understood development that has accompanied this is the “padding of qualifications” where you get a real degree and then hunt around for all kinds of shoddy qualifications to provide padding around it.
There are ominous implications emanating from these developments in education.
We will go down that path next week.