 | Around the World in 80 Ideas |
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HEALTH & EDUCATION 74: Schools in chains Non-state education franchises The problem: the cost of public education Governments everywhere are under pressure to restrain their budgets, and nowhere more so than in developing countries where the tax base may be small. Education is seen as an essential duty of the state - there are worries that private education can be divisive - but good education is labour-intensive and costly for an over-stretched government to provide. Is there a way out? The idea: branded education networks In fact, private education companies are flourishing in much of the developing world. And remarkably, they do not cater primarily for elites, but seek to extend their provision widely through innovative social responsibility programmes. Examples: innovation in schooling In Brazil, there are several chains of private schools. The largest is Objectivo, which has 500,000 students - from pre-school to pre-university ages, in centres and 450 franchises across Brazil. Another chain, COC, maintains three wholly-owned schools and nearly 100 franchises, teaching 26,000 students. The Pitágoras Group educates 80,000 students in its chain of schools. It sponsors educational television programmes, and is famous throughout Brazil for its programme of quality management in education, through which it has linked to other businesses such as O Groupo Educare, with several hundred schools. In India, the Delhi Public School Society is a successful chain of over 40 private schools, which include wholly-owned core schools, satellite schools owned by government units but run by the Society, village schools in backward areas which are subsidized by the core schools, and overseas schools. The Society also sponsors a research centre which develops innovative teaching systems. Another example is NIIT, India's largest computer-education provider. It has more than 400 centres in India, giving students a more up-to-date technology education than was possible through the traditional sector, and it is now exporting its successful formula to other countries. In South Africa the Education Investment Corporation (Educor) has 300,000 students on more than 40 campuses and in distance education. It covers basic education, training, and school learning at every level. Meanwhile, Speciss College in Zimbabwe provides independent high-school, tertiary, and professional education, with 30,000 students in five campuses. The Centre for Open Distance Education for Civil Society (CODECS) is a commercial distance learning organization with twelve regional centres in Romania. It provides college-level education and business management courses. There are private universities in countries as diverse as Argentina, Thailand, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Indonesia has a thousand private universities. In Turkey there are only two principal ones, Bilkent University in Ankara and Koç University in Istanbul - the first of a new wave of non-profit private colleges made possible after a scaling back of earlier state control in the 1980s. Assessment: the scope for branded education In most countries, the state provides education or makes private education difficult under its tax and regulatory regimes. Nevertheless, in many developing countries, entrepreneurial groups have arisen to provide a better education than students might sometimes get from the state. They charge relatively modest fees, and are financed almost totally from fee income, but still make a profit (or, if they are non-profit organizations, a surplus). Often, the most successful will be those who have pioneered particular approaches to education and franchise it out to local operators. Accordingly, these chains benefit from brand reputation and recognition, gain from economies of scale, and are large enough to cross-subsidize (or just take a risk on) disadvantaged students. Such organizations take pressure off the state and provide a better education than might otherwise be available. They also go to some lengths to ensure that they do not become elitist, but respond to the needs of disadvantaged students through social responsibility programmes. But they succeed only where the regulatory environment is sufficiently liberal to allow them to flourish. For more information:
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