There is no debate over the issue that the government schools in Nepal are in dire need of reform. These schools attract poor students, offer poor quality education and produce students with a poor ability to compete with their peers in private schools. These problems only serve to exacerbate the gap of expected income between children of the poor and of the rich.
Why are government schools performing poorly? Is it because of lack of funds to hire quality teachers? Is it because of political interference? Or, is it because of poor management?
The headmaster’s compensation mechanism is not tied to his performance. This gives him little incentive to manage his institution well.
The salary of government school teachers continues to be well above the average of private schools. Try finding a job in a government school and you are going to have a difficult time. It is a lot easier to find a job as a teacher in a private school. Put these two facts together and it’s realistic to believe that, on an average, government schools have equally qualified teachers. These teachers get paid higher than their counterparts in private schools. Despite this, the quality of education offered in government schools is well below that of private schools. Not surprisingly, parents strongly prefer sending their children to private schools.The most serious problem with government schools is not the lack of resources but its mismanagement.
The headmaster of the school is not answerable to the parents of students, the biggest stakeholders, or to the locally-elected representative. The headmaster’s compensation mechanism is not tied to his performance. This gives him little incentive to manage his institution well. Where is the reward for performing better? A headmaster’s lack of performance is also not punished in anyway. He does not fear losing his job. Not surprisingly, the public education sector faces the largest absenteeism compared to other public sectors. There is virtually no incentive for a headmaster to properly manage the school or for a teacher to teach well or to come to school on time.
Instead, teachers benefit by underperforming in classroom. The worse students perform in class, the greater their need for private instruction, which supplements the teacher’s income. It is these perverse incentives that have plagued the education sector. This is the heart of the problem! And, this is where the reforms need to be targeted.
There are a number of ways to tackle this problem. I shall focus on the one that I believe is easy and is the least expensive fix. The headmaster’s job needs to be on a contract basis. Say, a five-year contract that can be renewed through voting by the school’s largest stakeholders (parents). Parents have a direct interest in their children getting a better education and they are likely to vote for a headmaster that manages the school the best. This simple and cheap reform is bound to improve the quality of management to some degree. When coupled with a few other changes, such as giving the headmaster authority to hire and fire part of his staff, the impact of this new procedure will be even greater.
What about pumping more resources? Will that alleviate the problem? The current policy has been to tax private schools (actually parents) and divert the proceeds to government schools. While taxing private schools must have raised a handsome amount of cash for the government, the efficient use of this cash remains in question. This policy making appears to be guided primarily by frustrations due to increasing scholastic aptitude gaps between children of the rich and of the poor and less by scientific thinking.
The real attempt ought to be, first, in aligning the incentives so that good managers (headmasters) get rewarded for good performance and vice versa. Second, these managers of government schools must be given power to hire and fire at least part of their staff.
(Writer is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Finance at Texas A&M International University in Texas, USA.)