2.3.1.3 Pupil-Teacher Ratios
In elementary education, the rapid growth in enrollment was made possible in part by raising the pupil-to-teacher ratio (PTR) in order to expand the intake capacity. Overall, the scope for increasing the PTR in secondary education is more limited than in elementary education. With its much wider-ranging curriculum, secondary education requires far more subject specialists than elementary education, and this means that pupil-to-teacher ratios naturally tend to be lower. In 2004/05, the PTR for all secondary schools combined was 33:1, basically unchanged since 1990, which indicates that teacher recruitment has followed in lock-step with student enrollment.
Nevertheless, nationwide, there is some scope for raising the PTR in secondary education by a change in policy to offer
all students general secondary education, rather than, as now, attempting to track 25 percent of students into the vocational stream, and by relaxing existing norms for the deployment of teachers in secondary schools. In states where senior secondary education is part of the tertiary education, not only is the PTR low but also teachers are paid on the salary scales of lecturers, not just secondary school teachers. This adds to the cost of secondary education. By co-locating secondary schools with upper primary schools, or secondary with senior secondary schools, more efficient use of teachers can be achieved. More discussion on this issue follows in Chapter 4.
2.3.1.4 Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)
In terms of total supply of “seats”, secondary education depends on the active role of private aided and unaided schools. The dynamism and relatively promising the “alternate route” strengthened if the program is a replacement for emergency employment and out-of-field teaching.
Educate the public and the profession. Any attempt to reform will generate opposition and rhetoric about “lowering standards.” State officials need to explain the advantages of this approach, using some of the arguments made above, and highlighting research results which show that teachers from alternative programs generate student learning outcomes on par with traditionally trained teachers.
Do not make operation of the “alternate route” program contingent on university participation. For example, in the United States, non-university regional teacher training centers were not only crucial to the program’s workability, they also were—ironically—the main stimulus for university involvement. Had university participation been guaranteed in regulation, most colleges would have resisted making the needed changes in practice or refused outright to participate. The threat of being left out, created by the non- university regional centers, increased universities’ willingness to participate in the “alternate route” program. Expand the pool, recruit and select. In the State of New Jersey, USA, school districts can hire any graduate of any college who has a degree in the subject field, an appropriate mix of personal qualities and experience, and the ability to pass the relevant subject test. This expands and diversifies the pool of potential teachers to choose from. Marketing and incentive programs to attract the best candidates from this pool is the next step. Then application of transparent criteria to choose from among these applicants is needed, along with programs which provide on-going academic support to new recruits.
If possible, reform traditional teacher preparation, as well, by eliminating artificial and unnecessary requirements; thereby laying the groundwork for an alternative program that is equivalent and parallel. If an “alternate route” program is simply appended to an unchanged traditional system, then opponents can portray the excessive course requirements of the traditional program as “official standards” and the streamlined requirements of the alternative program as a “lowering of standards.”
Hold programs accountable; collect and analyze objective, measurable data on effectiveness of programs and graduates. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
learning outcomes in private schools suggests an opportunity exists to further develop PPPs at the secondary level. However, the current grant-in-aid system does not provide incentives for aided schools to expand enrollment, or to operate in under-served areas, and reform of this system should be seriously considered, initially through alternative models which can be piloted, evaluated, and then scaled up.
PPPs can be structured in many different ways, with varying degrees of private sector risk and responsibilities, ranging from facility services (e.g. building construction and maintenance, catering, etc.) to a full PPP model where the private sector partner is contracted to provide all teaching and non-teaching services (including construction and capital financing of new schools).
For example, the government might offer land and a twenty-year lease to stimulate private school construction, along with a contract to “buy” 50 percent of that school’s places over a certain period at an agreed unit cost formula. Or the government could simply contract with the private sector for a build, operate and transfer contract, which requires the private sector to finance all up-front capital costs in exchange for an agreed-upon annual leasing fee paid by public sector. This would (i) enable the public sector to transfer the risks of construction time and price to the private sector, providing incentives to private sector to complete construction in a cost- and time- efficient manner, and (ii) allow States to rapidly expand
infrastructure beyond their immediate financing capacity (by spreading their costs over the medium-term). This has been done quite extensively in the UK and other Commonwealth countries.
If needed, the public sector could also contract out management and teaching services of public schools to the non-public sector, with payments based on agreed-upon per student unit costs and satisfaction of performance criteria (quality of inputs, retention rates, examination pass rates, etc.). This might allow for faster and less costly recruitment of personnel and mobilization of teaching and non-teaching services than would be possible through a purely public system, enabling faster and cheaper expansion of access. Government could specify whether the school could charge parents additional fees above the per student subsidy, in which case it could also offer scholarships to students least able to pay.
In other words, public policy and financing can provide incentives to induce increased supply of school places and improve quality, while ensuring equity for disadvantaged groups. Critical factors for success include the use of transparent, competitive and open public bidding processes to generate value for money, and clear, detailed contracts which specify requirements, outputs, and responsibilities of all parties, including maximum delays for public sector monitoring and payment. The last point appears to be particularly important, as interviews of private secondary school managers in
The impressive expansion of secondary education in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, 40–50 years before such expansion in Europe, used an innovative formula: public funding and provision; an open and forgiving system which was nonselective and without early academic segregation; an academic yet practical curriculum; thousands of small, fiscally independent school districts with local control of schools and school funds. (Goldin 2001, cited in World Bank, 2005a)
After World War II European countries realized that restricted and elitist secondary schools with harsh selection measures entailed unsustainable losses of human capital and were anti-democratic. Secondary education expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s in Europe via largely public schooling (financing and provision), followed by reforms to improve quality in the 1980s.
In East Asia (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea) high public investment in expansion of secondary education broadened the human capital base and was critical to sustained, rapid economic growth. Efficient public-private partnerships and