Education for Children of Migrant Labor through Public Private Partnership (PPP) : The Case of the Tent Schools in Banga

1. Education for Children of Migrant Labor through Public Private Partnership (PPP) : The Case of the Tent Schools in Bangalore Malini Bhattacharjee Research Centre

2. Governments around the world face significant educational challenges- reducing drop- out rates and improving learning outcomes. World over, there are 73 million children out of school! (UNESCO, 2010)

3. OOSC in Karnataka Number of Out of School Children over the years

4. OOSC in Karnataka Out of 66,26,413 children in the 7-14 age group in the state, 1.11 lakh- remained out of school. This figure includes 80,149 children who dropped out. The rest never enrolled. (Annual report of SarvaShikshaAbhiyan (SSA) for 2010-11)

5. 16.7 per cent children in Karnataka (in the 15-16 age group) are deprived of their right to education in 2010-11. • Karnataka is the eighth state with a high percentage of school drop outs and children who are not enrolled in schools. (Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2011)

6. Apart from household work and earning compulsion, migration was the second biggest cause. • It kept off 20,520 from schools.

7. SSA initiatives • Bridge courses • Remedial courses • Back to School camps • Residential hostels Focus on physical factors like school infrastructure, both physical and human 5700 billion rupees allocated through Union Budgets from 1999-2000 to 2009- 2010

8. By 2004- 05, elementary school attendance increased to about 80% in rural areas and 88 per cent in urban areas • 1.6 million children were going to school in a subsidiary capacity, mostly to informal centres under SSA • Drop out rate however, decreased from 40% to 25 % at the primary level and from 56 % to 46 % at the middle level • Success therefore mostly in enrollment and not reducing drop out • Question- how to retain the children in formal schools after they come out of the informal centres?

9. PPP in education As a means of improving both the delivery and financing of Basic Education in developing and developed countries. A key trend has been the emergence of more sophisticated forms of private involvement in education through PPPs Extension of PPPs into social policy areas such as health and education is more recent -one of the most significant trends in public finance in the past decade.

10. Defining PPP PPPs can be defined narrowly to include only formal arrangements such as sophisticated infrastructural initiatives or they can be defined more broadly to include all manner of partnership between the public and private sector

11. Characteristics • Formal in nature • Involve the development of a long term relationship between the partners • Are outcome focused • Include an element of risk-sharing among the partners • Can involve both the voluntary and commercial sectors as private sector partners

12. Role of the public sector: to define the scope of business; specify priorities, targets, and outputs; and set the performance regime by which the management of the PPP is given incentives to deliver Role of the private sector: to deliver the business objectives of the PPP on terms offering value for money to the public sector

13. PPPs vs Privatisation “Privatisation implies permanent transfer of control, whether as a consequence of a transfer of ownership right from a public agency to one or more private parties, or for example, of a capital increase to which the public sector shareholder has waived its right to subscribe. In contrast, PPPs aim to promote improvements in the financing and provision of services from both the public and private sectors but not to increase the role of one over the other. Rather, PPPs are geared toward improvement of existing services provided by both sectors with an emphasis directed on system efficiency, effectiveness, quality, equity and accountability.” Wang (1999)

14. Kinds of PPP • Private sector philanthropic initiatives (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) • School management initiatives (Contract Schools, Charter Schools, Concession Schools) • Government purchase initiatives (Alternative Education, New Zealand) • Voucher and voucher-like initiatives(School Funding System, Netherlands) • Adopt-a-school programmes (Sindh education Foundation) • School capacity-building initiatives (Cluster based tarining of teachers, Punjab, Pakistan) • School infrastructure initiatives (P3 New Schools project, Canada and PPP for new schools, Egypt)

15. Evolution of PPP in India • Pre- independence- Aided schools- publicly funded, privately owned and managed • Independence- 1970s- Non- profits conceived their own initiative, managed and ran it independently • Leading change era-1970s- 1980s- Non- profits prioritized growing the capacity of their organization as a service provider, creating isolated high impact pockets and sometimes a parallel education system though on a much smaller scale • Sharing models era- 1990s- scale and sustainability • Systemic change era 2000s –Non- profits prioritizing rigorous research, reliable data, partnerships and advocating wide scale change which can have large scale impact

16. The Tent School Model GMRVF in partnership with the Department of Education, Government of Karnataka is running 15 ‘Tent schools’ with a reach to approximately 700 children. Tent schools are funded by the government on a per student basis. (Rs 3000/ student for six months)

17. Cater to the children of migrant labourers • These schools provide bridge education to out-of-school children and then mainstream them into formal education in a systematic manner • Follows the Nali Kali curriculum • Imparts health care inputs to the children

18. GMR Foundation’s inputs to the Tent school program • Establish Tent schools and supervise day-to-day management • Provide teachers and helpers • Provide safe drinking water and nutrition supplement • Arrange for regular health check-ups • Organize awareness sessions on education, health, hygiene • Organize exposure trips for children

19. GMRF also engages in need based support to the 15 govt. schools, which are nearest to the tent schools. • The support to Govt. schools includes supply of stationery, library books, renovation of toilet facilities, contributions such as water filter, computers, etc. • Awareness programs on education, health, socially relevant days, etc are organized in the Govt. schools.

20. “The support of Dept. of Education, Govt. of Karnataka is crucial in making Tent Schools an effective program. It includes, full time or part time government school teachers who are deputed to the tent schools from the nearest Govt. Schools, mid-day meal provision through the ‘AkshayaPatra’ program, provision for snacks, training for the teachers, part salary for the helper, etc.” (GMR Foundation website)

21. Strengths of GMR Foundation • Intense commitment • Stream of volunteers • Funds • Rapport with community • Network of partners

22. Strengths of the government • Dedicated structure and team • Training facilities for teachers • Legitimacy • Mainstream children to government schools • Reach (to track children after they are mainstreamed)

23. Areas of improvement • Lack of programme evaluation • Measures of success • Teacher training and retention • Curriculum

24. PPP Debate • PPP as an ideology • PPP as the only solution

25. Impact of PPP Students in countries where schools are publicly funded but privately operated (i.e., Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Ireland) perform significantly better than students in countries with traditional public (or private) school systems, while students in countries where schools are publicly operated but privately funded (i.e., Italy, Greece, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil)perform significantly worse. (LudigerWoessmann, 2005)

26. Concession Schools, Colombia- strong evidence that Concession Schools have a direct effect on reducing drop-out rates Barrera (2005) • PACES voucher scheme in Colombia- Voucher students more likely to complete 8th grade and their scores on standardised tests increased by two-tenths of a standard deviation than the non- voucher students (Angrist and others 2002)

27. FyA schools- schools in the FyA network were successful in reducing repetition and drop-outs (Swope and Latorre, 2000)

28. An impact evaluation of the Province of Balochistan’s Urban Girls’ Fellowship (UGF)Programme, which employed an experimental design, indicated that it increased girls’ enrolments by an average of 33 percentage points and boys’ enrolments by an average of 27.5 percentage points (Kim, Alderman and Orazem 1998a).

29. Another initiative by the Province of Baluchistan, the Community Support Process (CSP) programme- The evaluation showed that the CSP programme increased girls’ enrolment by an average of 22 percentage points and boys’ enrolments by an average of 9 percentage points

30. According to the MCGM's records, there are over 117 different organizations listed as public private partnerships. Most of the support consists of small infrastructure improvements and school supplies. Only nine of these organizations show extremely high potential to improve the quality of education by focusing on core areas such as building head teacher capacity, teacher training support, curriculum and pedagogy, assessments and in school remedial education. (Making the Grade, Dasra report)

31. Source: Making the Grade, Dasra report

32. Head teacher training- Akanksha • Teacher training- Muktangan, Teach for India, Naandi • Remedial education, school adoption • Curriculum and Pedagogy: • Muktangan equips each classroom with resources such as building blocks, art supplies, molding clay, etc. • Lifetrust - audiovisual content

33. “Changing the way students learn in public school classrooms is perhaps one of the most effective ways of reducing inequality in educational opportunity. By investing in research and development, outside expertise can create dynamic changes in teaching and learning practices within the public school system” (Making the Grade, Dasra report)

34. Lessons for a good PPP design • An enabling policy and regulatory environment and a strong legal framework • Transparent and competitive bidding process • Appropriate performance measures • Independent quality assurance/monitoring mechanisms to evaluate the provider performance and programme outcomes • Spirit of sharing joint responsibilities • Optimize partners’ strengths • Trust

35. Concluding thoughts • PPPs in the Basic Education sector are clearly no panacea • Progress toward MDGs and improvements in education outcomes require much broader reform programmes. • However, PPPs – if done right – are a useful tool for governments to achieve their educational policy objectives. • Require good policy design, careful implementation and effective political management