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Freedoms and Choices in Education

By 'Abidin Muhriz
When we talk about the failings of our education system we are almost always referring to problems with publicly funded education. Some of the most pressing concerns in recent times include how Malaysian children are growing up separately in vernacular schools, how to inject a culture of initiative and inquisitiveness in the delivery of education instead of relying on rote learning in order to pass exams, whether science and maths should be taught in English, whether a university should accept more non-Malay students, or whether a certain Vice Chancellor should be removed. Overwhelmingly, these questions are asked towards the government: what can the ministry do to fix these urgent problems? What should government do to make sure our children receive better education? The pervasiveness of these calls to fix these problems makes one think that education is the preserve of the government. But statistics tell a different story. With the expansion of the Malaysian middle class a quiet revolution has occurred in how many Malaysian children are educated. As Dato' Dr Sharom Ahmat pointed out in the previous article of this series, there were 559 private universities or colleges in Malaysia compared to 71 such public institutions in 2005. Already many1 Malaysian parents access some form of private education in the form of tuition for their children; the tuition industry in 2006 was reportedly worth RM4 billion, or 80% of the national education budget for the same year. The education of their children is clearly something that many parents cannot trust the government system to adequately deliver, and so they are seeking other options. Yet despite these statistics, an expansion of private education (or the replication of its benefits into the government system) is rarely advocated by reformers, perhaps due to the prevalence of two assumptions about private education and school choice. The first assumption is that private education is only accessible by the rich. But in a paper republished by the Malaysia Think Tank last year,2 Professor James Tooley demonstrates that private schools run as commercial concerns (in addition to run by charities or religious organisations) in the slums of Kenya and India do, in fact, serve the poor. World Bank studies comparing education in developing countries in Southeast Asia and South America found that private school students not only outperform government school students on standardised tests, but that they deliver this education more cost-effectively: they deliver better results for every dollar spent.3 Nor is this a new phenomenon. Education in the golden ages of Muslim civilisation was funded by private trusts (waqf) run by trustees and donors. In Victorian Britain, when education was provided almost entirely by independent bodies, literacy was racing ahead while today it languishes in parts of the country.4 The second assumption is that one needs a private system to enjoy the benefits of school choice. This is not true. Already Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries and some cities in the USA use a voucher system as a mechanism to deliver education. The basic premise of such is a system is that parents receive vouchers funded by the taxpayer from the government. Parents are

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then free to spend the voucher at the school they determine is best for their child. There are many variations and refinements to this system, and some limitations where rural or isolated schools are concerned but the general effect is that schools now have an incentive to deliver what parents want in order to get the money. So what can we do to endow some of the same benefits to Malaysian schools? A sudden mass privatisation of schools would be too radical and indeed damaging, whereas the implementation of a voucher system would first require thorough research, especially on possible impact on schools in rural areas. But what we can do relatively quickly is to give Malaysian schools and universities more power to manage their own affairs. This would slowly introduce an element of competition and prepare for more reforms in the future. So, for example, schools could make decisions about uniforms, admissions and discipline while following the national curriculum. The more variables a parent has in choosing a school, the less likely the choice will be made according to just one criterion (like a school's racial composition). Empowering schools in this way might still be deemed too radical and politically unfeasible. In that case, gradual decentralisation could be the way forward. One first step might be to give state governments control over the hiring and firing of teachers. Such measures would help expose corruption and waste as states compete to deliver the best value for money, as well as tease out strategies which work and those which don't. There may be legal hurdles, however. The Federal Constitution's Ninth Schedule spells out the powers of the Federal and State governments, and education is explicitly under the purview of the former. Thus the distribution of the RM30 billion allocated to the federal Education Ministry under the 2008 Budget is its own prerogative. A constitutional amendment may even be required before decentralisation of this sort could occur, and this may form part of a bigger conversation about federalism. In any case, the results of devolution could quickly bear fruit. In 2006 Germany gave its states exclusive control over educational systems and there is now fierce competition between them to hire and retain the best teachers. The result is better quality teaching across the country as states pour resources into training and attractive salary packages. The complaints by recently-replaced former Universiti Malaya Vice Chancellor Datuk Rafiah Salim of political interference ('nonsense', as she called it) are cause for concern. The effect of the University and University Colleges Act and the Akujanji pledge on stifling freedom and innovation in universities has been much discussed elsewhere. Yet these are limitations that private colleges are relatively free from. If these disparities are not addressed, segregation and inequality amongst the next generation of Malaysians may become entrenched, and that is another reason to grant government institutions some of the same freedoms that private institutions already enjoy. Pilot projects with a few government universities and boarding schools are another option to get reforms underway.

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Finally, devolved responsibility means that the failures of one institution won't be taken to be representative as a whole, and corrective measures can be taken between relevant stakeholders, removing politicians from the equation and preventing unnecessary politicisation. The Malaysian middle class has already shown its hunger for more choice and variety in the education of their children. It is high time these benefits be made available to all Malaysians.

Footnotes:
1

According to a Merdeka Centre poll in December 2005, 64%.

Tooley, J. (2007), Could the Globalisation of Education Benefit the Poor?, Malaysia Think Tank.
3

For example: Lockheed, M. and Jimenez, E. (1994), Public and Private Secondary Schools in Developing Countries; 'Public Schools and Private: Which Are More Efficient', World Bank Policy and Research Bulletin, January/February 1992, vol. 3, no. 1
4

Bartholomew, J. (2004) 'Education: eleven years at school and still illiterate' in The Welfare State We're In.

'Abidin Muhriz, Director of the Malaysia Think Tank (www.waubebas.org), shares two almae matres with the Minister of Education.