Equip to Educate, Excel and Exceed!

World Development Reports, in the past, have often indicated that the biggest problem of poverty is the inability to take well-considered decisions due to lack of knowledge. Lack of effective primary and secondary school education leaves the citizenry ill-equipped to know their reality and take appropriate decisions that affect themselves and others. This makes a world of difference in the way people do their business, conduct their personal and professional lives. Correction of this scenario can open up new possibilities for growth and development of the country.

Bill Gates, in his recent annual letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, writes about Warren Buffett calling every American – those who have been born in the United States – lucky winners of the "ovarian lottery". Lucky, because of the education that American children receive and the system that rewards innovation and risk-taking. Even while Gates admits that within the United States too, “there is a big gap between people who get the chance to make the most of their talents and those who don't", he emphatically makes it clear that good schooling is the critical factor. On a personal note, he has gone on to write about the difference schooling has made in Melinda's and his lives.

Recently, a study conducted by PurpleLeap, an organisation specialising in entry level talent management, found that only about seven per cent of the students passing out of engineering colleges across India were employable; the rest were found wanting in either technical skills or soft-skills or both, and clearly lacked problem solving skills. A number of commentators were quick to place the blame for this situation at the doorsteps of our private engineering colleges. While our engineering colleges certainly have their share of blame, we need to look at the quality of the students going into these institutions. Years before, a test conducted in Nicaragua had showed that seven out of ten engineers from that country then could not calculate the volume of a cube with sides of one metre if the formula was not given at hand. Obviously, it was the state of schooling in that country that was more at fault than the state of their technical education.

Look at the other side of the story: Bill Gates went to Harvard, but dropped out. So did Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who had gone to Washington State University. Michael Dell had joined the University of Texas at Austin to be a physician before dropping out. Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after just a semester. Colleges did not make any of them, but schooling ensured the right foundations. Ask any one of them and they will talk about their early education.

 What all these tell us is essentially that if we don't get the schooling of our children right, it is more likely that our children won't get the chance to make most of their talents. Of course, for those who have already gone through these stages, and are striving to be employed, organisations like PurpleLeap can be of tremendous help. They help you acquire employable skills and help nation-building by transforming un-utilisable social investment in human resources to utilisable human capital. But, can they fully compensate for lack of good schooling? Unfortunately not!

One of the key lessons that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has learned is about the importance of good teachers. Among the Schools which have received funding from the foundation, the ones that have shown remarkable progress are the ones which helped their teachers be more effective in the classroom. To quote Gates, again: "It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school." As a matter of fact, he adds that whenever he talk to teachers, "it is clear that they want to be great, but they need better tools so they can measure their progress and keep improving".

That is true not just in the United States, but world over. Our teachers, who themselves have gone through the old system, if they have to improve, have to be equipped with better tools.

James Tooley, an expert of international repute on private low-cost education, has often said that in developing countries, it is not the state that has the greatest potential to help the poor, but the private sector. Living up to that prediction are several innovations in the education sector initiated by private entrepreneurs in India. The NIIT story is Tooley’s favourite example.

Of course, as Tooley would point out, no programme or tool can compensate for lack of accountability in the system. Often, our schools fail our children because our teachers are answerable only to the government servants. In one set of schools, often state funded and run, even when parents vote with their feet, exit them and move their children to private schools, no one really bothers. Whereas in schools where teachers are accountable to the Manager – who can discontinue their services -- and through the manager to the parents – who can shift their children to competing schools – the system fails our children much less. Guess, which set of schools are signing up to implement innovative teacher training and curriculum development programmes?

Many schools where Gates Foundation invested money in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way. And incidentally, these tended to be schools which stayed inflexible in their approach, did not take such steps as allowing the principal (manager) to pick the team of teachers or change the curriculum. And the schools which showed outstanding achievements? Almost all of these schools were schools with limited public funding and hence, greater flexibility. According to Bill Gates, one of the key things these schools have done is help their teachers be more effective in the classroom. Surprising? Perhaps not! Choice and accountability are always interrelated.

The public policy lessons from these experiences are pretty clear. And quality education for all classes of people would transform this country and take it to the next level. Would the next generation of Indians consider themselves as winners of the 'ovarian lottery'? That depends on this generation of Indians, our political and business class, our parents and teachers, and our civil society. That depends on how far we are willing to go to equip our schools and empower our parents to educate our youth to exceed and excel beyond what the world has set as targets for them!