Meeting of Planning Commission and HRD on PPP in Schools

Source : Times of India

These are few excerpts from TOI report on this meeting.

While Haldea brought about some changes like putting the burden of land and infrastructure on the private entity, it was felt that the proposed schools cannot start from class I. HRD minister Kapil Sibal said in the meeting held on Wednesday that these schools have to be from class V. Haldea's proposal that these schools should also be in urban areas was also not approved, with the minister saying that they should be in backward areas.

Haldea's new proposal said land for schools will have to be acquired by the private entity and that the state government will only facilitate the process. It also said that the private entity will have to bear the capital expenditure as well as pay for uniforms, textbooks and annual health check-up of students.

The financing formula proposed by Haldea said that of the total capacity of 2,000 students, 50% should be supported by the government. And at least 50% of the students should be from SC/ST/OBC while the remaining may be children of non-income tax payers. Besides, 25% of the students should be girls.

The recurring support in respect of academic activities should be fixed at Rs 1,600 per month per student based on the average expenditure being incurred by the government on a student in Kendriya Vidyalayas in 2009. Government support should last for 10 years and should vary between locations. Graduated support should be provided for different locations: 75% in metropolitan towns exceeding 30 lakh population, 90% in cities exceeding 10 lakh, 100% in towns exceeding one lakh, 120% in rural areas and 140% in north-east, J&K and tribal areas.

Mr. Haldea's model appears to be a very rigid and fixed formula. Wonder what would be the bidding criteria  for these PPP schools?

Another issue is what to do with the non performing schools? There should be some thought as to how these can be transformed using PPP models.

Why cant HRD ministry appoint a few transaction advisors to propose a few models or even hold workshps with private sector to get right feedback?

PPP in Primary Education ??

Government had announced its plans to bring Public Private Partnership Model into primary education. This is one area where we see that private sector already has a lot of players. But problem with our primary education policy which doesnt allow profit taking from primary education and hence there is no legitimate business for primary education.

Currently all private schools are also being run as not-for-profit institutions. Question is as to why and how private sector players benefit from it. In that case one would have to look deeply into the fee structure of these schools and their way of procuring services for the school.

Given this scenario and motive of the government to woo private sector to partner in the PPP of schools one wonders as to if government would be able to make necessary adjustments in legal frameworks so as to allow private sector to make legitimate profits from the investment they are being asked to make.

Current sparring between planning commission and HRD ministry over the blueprint of PPP model in primary education does not seem to address this important issue at all

This news item in telegraph gives us the latest on current row :

Fissures on education partnership - Planning Commission stonewalls HRD ministry’s objections; meeting today

CHARU SUDAN KASTURI

as per this report:

The Planning Commission has stonewalled most objections raised by the human resource development ministry and experts to its blueprint for public-private partnership (PPP) in school education, setting the stage for a possible confrontation.

Ahead of a key meet with HRD minister Kapil Sibal and a panel of experts, the commission has circulated a blueprint that has not incorporated objections raised to an earlier draft, top officials told The Telegraph.

The meeting, scheduled for tomorrow, was initially planned to vet a “revised” Planning Commission blueprint that was to incorporate concerns raised by the experts and the HRD ministry.

But the talks could now witness panel members and the ministry questioning the commission on why it had only made “superficial” changes to the blueprint while ignoring substantive concerns, sources said.

One has to look at this model from Right to Education bill's perspective also. This bill would require government to foot a big fat bill of primary education and also redefine roll of private schools in it.

If one looks at the motive behind PPP option for primary schooling, ideally it should ensure :

• Increase Availability of service
• Improvement of quality of service
• Decrease cost of delivery of service

As one can see that private sector definitely can bring improvement of quality of service and that might add premium to the cost. Decrease of cost can be hoped if inefficiencies of government system are  done away with by replacing more accountable and efficient delivery of service. One needs to balance these 2 issues to see both qualitative and quantitative value for money from PPP options.

Last but not the least is increasing availability of service. This is crucial as critical business decision for private sector is at stake. Better business and lesser cost can be worked out if one chooses location where other physical infrastructure exists. Quandry is that in such places some sort of private and government school infrastructure exists and might be giving par or somewhat below par performance. The actual challenge for government would to work out a model which would attract private sector to provide better quality education at lesser cost and in far flung areas. This brings demand risk and also higher cost of service delivery into play for the private sector and government would have to find model to meet private sector half way on these issues.

One solution could be bundling of schools with a mix to provide cross subsidy. Other could be to allow local entrepreneurs to participate in the process with linkages to some common service provider to ensure better quality of service.