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| Mr Homraj Acharya |
The 21st century economy requires a well-trained labor force at all levels of economic activity. The initiative I propose here would expand the possibility of high quality education to everyone in the country through publicly funded, privately managed education initiative. Under this initiative, schools would be established by private entities and the government would provide funding to schools based on the number of students enrolled in specific grades and programs. Because there are different needs in the various grades in schools, the funding has to be weighted to reflect the reality of program needs. This initiative would be called the Nepal Open Choice Initiative or Charter Initiative.A charter school is a public school operated by a private entity that is accountable to the public, but with funding provided by the government. However, it is not a community school. It is managed like a private business entity by an organization or a public venture -but the beauty of this is that there is no cost to parents.
Access to high quality public education is critical to a nation's development. Nations may contain all the resources of the world, but if they don't have an educated public, they will not be able to use those resources. Apart from this economic argument, there is a moral argument. That is, it is the moral responsibility of a state to provide high quality education to its citizens so that they can innovate and create opportunities for themselves and their fellow citizens within their own country. Due to the lack of quality education, our public education system produces a labor force that is capable of providing mostly low level services for people in affluent nations.
While low level services are an important part of the global economy, it is important for a nation to focus on producing people who can contribute ideas, knowledge, skills and innovative approaches to solving problems.
The schools cannot charge any fees.
Charters provide schools the freedom to innovate and offer parents the open choice to select many arrays of education programs that fit their children’s needs.
Schools are approved by an independent board based on the quality of proposals submitted by different groups to operate schools.
Each school would have to have a distinct strategy to attract more students to its campus. By definition, charter schools are driven by missions and a desire to make a difference in a society, so the likelihood of their success is very high in a country like Nepal. Charter schools are specialty public schools, but they are open to everyone. The movement for charter schools started in the 1970s and 80s in the US. However, the concept became more popular and picked up speed in the 90s.
First, the government would need to adjust its current policy to allow charter schools to be established.
This would involve creating an independent authorizing
board whose responsibility would be to judge the soundness of submitted proposals by the prospective school operators.
The establishment of charter schools has the potential to increase enrollment and reduce the repeater and dropout problems, resulting in a higher return on investment, because the resource does not have to be used twice for the same person.
For funding, the government would have to establish a funding formula on the basis of the number of students through a mechanism called a weighted per pupil funding formula. The government provided funding would include instructional costs and non instructional costs such as overhead and administration and facilities subsidy.
To prevent fraud and over counting, the number of students reported by schools would have to be audited for enrollment and attendance by an independent auditing firm hired by the government. The audited number is used as the basis for funding. The school can raise private funds.
However, schools cannot charge fees to the students.
Such schools are operated like a business that must cater to clients’ specific needs.
The role of the government is to be a facilitator, create good policies, establish sound accountability measures and let the schools run like private business. Any school operating under this provision will have to meet academic, financial and management standard proposed in the proposal submitted during the time of application. The school concerned has the right to hire and fire the teachers. The government has no say in this. The schools develop/determine the curriculum.They would have to propose what curriculum they will use at the time of their proposal submission.The charter schools are specialty schools and therefore there would not be any limits; however, limits should be placed on schools’ enrollment floor and ceilings to prevent mismanagement. For example, there could be a minimum of 250 students and a maximum of 1000 students in a single school. The minimum and maximum could be worked out. This would have to be worked out in the government policy on the common practice research.
Homraj Acharya is a former education policy advisor at the Washington DC’s Department of Education.
Access to high quality public education is critical to a nation's development. Nations may contain all the resources of the world, but if they don't have an educated public, they will not be able to use those resources. Apart from this economic argument, there is a moral argument. That is, it is the moral responsibility of a state to provide high quality education to its citizens so that they can innovate and create opportunities for themselves and their fellow citizens within their own country. Due to the lack of quality education, our public education system produces a labor force that is capable of providing mostly low level services for people in affluent nations.
While low level services are an important part of the global economy, it is important for a nation to focus on producing people who can contribute ideas, knowledge, skills and innovative approaches to solving problems.
The schools cannot charge any fees.
Charters provide schools the freedom to innovate and offer parents the open choice to select many arrays of education programs that fit their children’s needs.
Schools are approved by an independent board based on the quality of proposals submitted by different groups to operate schools.
Each school would have to have a distinct strategy to attract more students to its campus. By definition, charter schools are driven by missions and a desire to make a difference in a society, so the likelihood of their success is very high in a country like Nepal. Charter schools are specialty public schools, but they are open to everyone. The movement for charter schools started in the 1970s and 80s in the US. However, the concept became more popular and picked up speed in the 90s.
First, the government would need to adjust its current policy to allow charter schools to be established.
This would involve creating an independent authorizing
board whose responsibility would be to judge the soundness of submitted proposals by the prospective school operators.
The establishment of charter schools has the potential to increase enrollment and reduce the repeater and dropout problems, resulting in a higher return on investment, because the resource does not have to be used twice for the same person.
For funding, the government would have to establish a funding formula on the basis of the number of students through a mechanism called a weighted per pupil funding formula. The government provided funding would include instructional costs and non instructional costs such as overhead and administration and facilities subsidy.
To prevent fraud and over counting, the number of students reported by schools would have to be audited for enrollment and attendance by an independent auditing firm hired by the government. The audited number is used as the basis for funding. The school can raise private funds.
However, schools cannot charge fees to the students.
Such schools are operated like a business that must cater to clients’ specific needs.
The role of the government is to be a facilitator, create good policies, establish sound accountability measures and let the schools run like private business. Any school operating under this provision will have to meet academic, financial and management standard proposed in the proposal submitted during the time of application. The school concerned has the right to hire and fire the teachers. The government has no say in this. The schools develop/determine the curriculum.They would have to propose what curriculum they will use at the time of their proposal submission.The charter schools are specialty schools and therefore there would not be any limits; however, limits should be placed on schools’ enrollment floor and ceilings to prevent mismanagement. For example, there could be a minimum of 250 students and a maximum of 1000 students in a single school. The minimum and maximum could be worked out. This would have to be worked out in the government policy on the common practice research.
Homraj Acharya is a former education policy advisor at the Washington DC’s Department of Education.
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