Correcting Education Systems in Developing Countries

Unrealistic goals, pessimistic expectations and flawed incentives perpetuate a bleak future of education systems in the developing world. Focusing on core competencies, utilizing technology to complement teachers and lowering of expectations can help crack persisting education problems among poor countries.

A Problem of Demand or Supply? 

Education systems in developing countries are struggling to attract children.

 ·   Child absentee rates vary between 14 percent and 50 percent worldwide.

Is such problem brought about by difficulty in access to or a lack of demand for education?

Those who underscore the “supply of schooling” say the solution rests on getting children into school. Such idea is exemplified by schemes like:

·    The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals on ensuring that all children complete primary schooling and gender disparity in all levels of education is eliminated by 2015. The MDGs were established in 2000.

·    Many countries are working toward these second and third MDGs. Between 1999-2006, enrollment rates in primary school in Africa increased from 54 percent to 70 percent, and in East and South Asia from 75 percent to 88 percent, while the number of out-of-school children decreased from 103 million in 1999 to 73 million in 2006, according to UNICEF.

However, enrollment cannot guarantee quality learning.

·    In India, the 2005 Annual State of Education Report conducted by local non-governmental organization Prathram found that, of the 1,000 children surveyed, nearly 35 percent in the 7-14 age bracket could not read a firs-grade level paragraph and about 60 percent could not read a simple, second-grade level story. Only 30 percent could do second-grade mathematics.

·    In Pakistan, 80 percent of third-graders could not read a first-grade level paragraph.

 Meanwhile, those who believe that education problems stem from a lack of demand argue that demand is low precisely because parents underestimate or are unaware of the benefits of education. When the returns to, or benefits of, education become attractive enough, enrollment will increase even without state intervention.

• The Green Revolution in India prompted an increase in the level of technical skills needed to become a farmer, which consequently raised the value of learning. Regions better suited to new developments introduced by the Green Revolution saw education increased faster.

Champions of demand-side root of education problems say there is a need to foster industries requiring educated workforce. When there is demand for an educated workforce, pressure to supply it will go after. Since parents are now well aware of the returns to education, they will start to demand education providers to deliver what they need. This will drive competition between public and private education providers.

But parents can view education as an investment - the costs of which are incurred by them in the present, but the benefits reaped by children in the future. Given this, sending children to school would not be solely determined by the return to education but also other factors such as how parents’ earnings are spent and their expectations about their children.

If this argument holds, then the government may need to step in to make it financially worthwhile for parents to get their children into school.

Education Interventions

Some top-down public interventions have been employed to help ramp up the supply of schooling. These include:

• Conditional cash transfer – Pioneered in Mexico in the mid-1990s, the conditional cash transfer program offers payments to households only if they send their children to school and the family obtained preventive healthcare. The program aims to entice households to send children to school regardless of what the family thought about education. A World Bank study on CCT in Malawi found that the program’s conditionality does not seem to have any effect when compared with an unconditional scheme. Dropout rate of 6 percent was the same for households who received conditional transfer and those that received unconditional payments, suggesting that parents did not needed to be forced to get their children into school, but only needed financial assistance to do so

• Compulsory schooling – Taiwan, for instance, passed a law in 1968 that made it mandatory for children to finish nine years of schooling, up from the previous six years of mandatory education. The law had significant positive effects in the employment prospects of children and also had a considerable effect on mortality.

Again, schemes focusing on the supply of schooling do not ensure better quality education.

To address the demand for higher quality education, some parents would be willing to shell out more money to send their children to private schools even if free public schools are available.

• Private schools are the canonical demand-driven education strategy. In South Asia and Latin America, monthly private school fees can be as low as $1.50. In terms of quality, Pakistani children enrolled in private schools were 1.5 years ahead in English and 2.5 years in math compared to children in public schools by third grade, according to the Learning and Educational Achievement in Pakistan Schools survey.

Why Education Can be a Poverty Trap?

Misconceptions about the returns to education can distort a parent’s view on spending evenly across his or her children. Parents may choose to concentrate all their resources on the most promising child, leaving less if not zero chances for the other children to access education services. This may lead to the creation of education-based poverty trap.

Moreover, education systems including the curriculum and the organization of schools were established during colonial periods and catered to local elite. There is a prejudice against children in the bottom track. Even teachers expect that children from this group cannot accomplish very much compared to those in the top track.

• According to the Public Report on Basic Education in India released in the late 1990s, one of the reasons many teachers do not want to be posted in “backward” villages is local residents “have no potential for education.”

 When both parents and teachers elevate their expectations and stop taking interest in the education of children who lag behind, this can create an education-based poverty trap.

Amending Education Systems

To salvage education systems in the developing world, these things need to be considered:

• Education systems should target basic skills and commit to having every child master these set of skills. The curriculum should focus on the acquisition of these skills and continuous assessments of what children know should be employed.

• Children who have fallen behind should be allowed to catch up. In lower grades, remedial teachers need relatively training.

• Curriculum and classrooms should be reorganized to allow children to learn at their own pace, especially ensuring that those who fall behind can concentrate on basic skills.

• More proximate goals for both teachers and children need to be established.

• Technology should be used to complement teachers in teaching, for instance, through computer-assisted learning programs.

Source:

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “Top of the Class” Chapter 4, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics (New York Public Affairs, 2011) pp. 71-101