Options for engaging the private sector
If a government accepts that it cannot finance the demand for higher education on its own and does not wish to ask the beneficiaries to pay the full cost in the state-owned sector, it has no alternative to considering the private sector as a partner. It can then adopt various options:
- Drawing on private sector players as members of policy commissions or permanent policy/strategy units.
- Appointing private sector leaders to the Boards of buffer bodies and quality assurance agencies.
- Encouraging the sector to form a representative body (properly staffed with a secretariat) that can be consulted on policy issues.
One big gap in any liaison with the private sector concerns the higher education providers from overseas and virtual or distance providers. Do they need to be aware of national policies and priorities? How can the government bring them into some form of discussion if they are elusive, remote (and possibly uninterested)? If they form partnerships with weaker colleges and professional groupings, is there anything that the State can do?
John Fielden, Guest Commentator
CHEMS Consulting
London
Comments (7)
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Private education has come to stay, whether governments like it or not. In Ghana, private enrollment at pre-secondary level is approaching 20% (2005/2006 EMIS) and whether for the profit motive or to offer an alternative quality education to the generally poorer quality public education, private school proprietors are providing a significant fifth of basic education in Ghana and especially in urban areas. For this reason, government has no choice but to involve private education providers in policy and decision making. Private education providers have organized themselves into the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS). As a first step, this body can be engaged at the highest level of policy to contribute to policy given that implementation of any education policy cannot succeed without the private sector. For a coherent education system, there is the need to have a uniform structure, curriculum, and standards..and while this may not be possible for all private schools, there should be a system within which private schools should operate for government oversight. As a result of the half-hearted involvement of the private education providers by government in Ghana, even a basic requirement like data collection, collation, and analysis is frought with challenges mainly presented by the unwillingness or inability of private schools to provide enrollment, teacher, learning materials, and infrastructure data for education. The school census frame remains ever changing and there remain enormous challenges in bringing all private schools on board. How will we know when Ghana achieves universal primary education?
A second step would be for the education sector to have a way of renewing the registration of schools, perhaps every three years as a way of bringing private education providers in regular contact with the education sector. In Sierra Leone, this is even more important since more that half of all basic schools were originally opened and run by provide proprietors. Currently these schools are run as government assisted schools.
Posted by: Eunice Dapaah | Nov 9, 2008 5:19:22 PM
An issue that merits further discussion is the link between government funding of private providers and regulation.
The issue of government funding of private providers is interesting in and of itself and much has been written about government support for private schools and higher education institutions through means such as vouchers, subsidies, scholarships, etc.
However, it is often the case that government funding of private educational providers is accompanied by greater regulation. For example, government-aided schools in India, Bangladesh and many African countries and integrated schools in New Zealand are all subject to greater regulation than their 'fully independent' counterparts.
This raises several questions: Should this be the case - is greater regulation justified when governments subsidize private providers? Does such regulation reduce the benefits that can flow from private involvement in education? What are country experiences with government regulation of government-assisted/aided schools? If there is a justification for increased regulation, how should governments regulate in order to minimize potential harmful effects of regulation?
Posted by: Norman LaRocque | Nov 10, 2008 3:23:10 AM
I agree that private sector providers need to be brought into the discussion of a fair and transparent regulatory framework but I would suggest that they need to be urged to work hand in hand with public institutions.
If the overall goal is to provide improved opportunities to students, it is very counterproductive to see the private HEIs undermine or further weaken the public sector. This is taking place frequently as faculty and staff leave the public sector (at least part of the time) to join the private institutions. The issue needs to be addressed so that these two sub-systems may co-exist in ways that contribute positively to human resource development.
This issue is also relevant and important when cross-border higher education is considered as the attractiveness of the foreign provider often acts as a magnet to draw away the best from the public sector.
Posted by: Eva Egron-Polak | Nov 11, 2008 5:53:19 AM
It is vital that private sector providers are closely involved in policy formulation and that fora are set up by governments to enable this to happen.
Private providers should, however, be considered as full partners and not supplicants of the state. They should develop their own representative bodies, much the same as happens in other industries. This will give them a national voice and a public platform. Governments could, where resources are very limited, pump prime such bodies on the understanding that they become self financing at an agreed time. Donors could support this with earmarked funds.
Given population growth trajectories, the absence of sufficient tax receipts to support a growing public education sector and finite donor resources, education sector development at all levels will need the private sector to guarantee sustainability. There is a strong case for looking at existing public education agencies or parts of them and outsourcing them at the earliest opportunity, to avoid producer capture and to demonstrate a strong commitment to the private sector as part of the solution and not as competition.
Posted by: Tim Emmett | Nov 11, 2008 12:42:52 PM
Even if the regulatory structure is changed, it will not automatically change the way policies are implemented in the field. Public sector administrators and the private providers need to appreciate the objectives and operation of the new partnership environment if it is to have any impact.
The following could assist:
(i) organising an annual Education Forum for government and non-government officials on directions in education policy and the changing role of government in education;
(ii) developing a resource and training program that outlines good practice in regulation; and
(iii) providing training and mentoring in good regulatory practice for officials from the different institutional tiers of Government.
Posted by: Michael Latham, CfBT Education Trust | Nov 11, 2008 2:35:24 PM
This debate is really informative. In my country, the private education providers have been brought on board follow up to support the government programme on Universal Secondary Education and Training (UPPET). While the bulk of primary schools (over 90%) are government, it's not the case with secondary education where the share between government and private education providers is equal, implying the private sector and parents are central players in the provision of secondary education. The division of private education was established in the Ministry of Education and the private education providers are engaged in policy decisions that affect their operations. It's through this involvement that more is getting to be known and tabled for discussion at the policy decision making levels. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that still need to be addressed especially from the private education providers' side to enable government to engage them meaningfully: a) the differentiated nature of private education providers is a major barrier (some are too small others are too large and hence their needs are diverse yet articulated through the same representation body); b) private providers look to government for guidance especially in regard to curriculum and other issues affecting education operations. This limits the innovative aspect from which government could have drawn good lessons; c) while government has instituted systems that should support entire monitoring of education provisions whether government or private, the latter still perceive government as one that works to undermine them. Half of the private providers don't submit information to the central systems to enable effective reporting on education at the country level, inspection visits by government personnel to their schools are thought to be fault finding as opposed to mechanisms through which quality service delivery can be enhanced, etc. Meaningful engagement is thus yet to be realised but steps towards that have been initiated. Funding still poses another challenge to private providers and avenues are being explored on how to support quality, meaningful and sustainable expansion of their operations.
Posted by: I. Mulindwa | Nov 14, 2008 8:26:43 AM
Structural holes and a further differentiation of kind of providers-more differentiated models of cooperation like forums needed.
Given the enormous dynamics of education entrepreneurship, caring parents, advocacy groups and philanthropists in several countries, the once quite well-bounded networks of providers of education services are becoming more elusive. Concerning smarter forms of regulation, which take up and foster impulses from private actors, one of the most important tasks lies in coming up with new forms of collaboration, including more diverse actors than today. One cornerstone of identifying these co-actors in education regulation lies in tracking the networks and the formation of networks of providers and regulators of education. Nowadays, with the predominant taxonomy of education service providers in public and private, the dirsuptive dynamics in education landscapes are not fully grasped. To be able to incorporate more heterogenous actors the regulation designers have to go beyond the public and private scheme of yesterday and today, enabling more collective intelligence to be at work. One form of grasping a more representative crowd of actors, thus contributing to more encompassing forms of regulation, might be to differentiate between actors who are providing primary education services (teaching, guiding and counseling, mentoring) and those who are providing secondary education services - services which are needed to enable primary educational services (like education finance, educational architecture). With a tracking of the emergence of new actors in the different fields and the tracking of network formation in that field might help to fill structural holes which are developing due to the predominant taxonomy of private and public actors and the related quasi-non-representation of certain actor groups. On the basis of more social network oriented techniques and an inquiry in those service configurations, which are needed to foster education services much progress could be made. To give an example: When educational sepcialists will arrive at a consensus that apart from instruction and direct teaching, counseling services and education architeture as well as designing educational IT-Hardware and software as well as educational content are needed, different subforums and working groups of different actors might be established. These could help to contribute with their own expertise in cognitive and learning sciences, educational methods, education finance and education environment design to help students to learn better. Gathering intelligence especially from student groups and parents, learning more about aspirations of education consumers and stakeholders to education, like employers with their prospective skill needs, might also contribute to formulate cornerstones and prioritized fields and points of regaluting actions of government, Government and agencies. As in other realms like technical standardization (ELEC) in the European Union these forms of forum design and a more detailed look at capacity-buidling might help to fill structural holes in emerging networks of education provdiders locally, regionally and globally, thus contributing to smarter, dynamic-enabling forms of regulation.
Posted by: Ingo Rollwagen | Nov 14, 2008 12:48:20 PM