Developing Ratings to Address Specific Needs of Stakeholders
Jul 20, 2010
Education is recognized as a basic right by the United Nations. In accordance with this, India has recently passed the Right to Education (RTE) Bill, which mandates that every child between the ages of 6 and 14 has the right to free and compulsory education. This seems to be the easy part. What happens next is the challenge. As I see it, there are 2 scenarios:
- There are very few or no schools to send children to
- There are too many schools and choosing a school is the main issue
I will touch upon the second scenario here, specifically in the context of affordable private schools (APS). In India, there is a mushrooming of APS, both recognized and unrecognized, quite a few of which are located in urban and semi-urban areas. They are being established primarily as a result of the increasing demand for quality education. Most of the time, parents select their children’s schools based on word of mouth or on the suggestion of friends and neighbors. Not only an issue for parents, it is also an issue for schools because it creates a situation with no clear differentiation in a very competitive market.
Given these circumstances, it becomes increasingly important that a tool or a set of tools be created that can be used to segregate schools based on different parameters. School rating is one such tool that can be used for a variety of purposes and address issues of differentiation, recognition, etc. A number of questions come to mind, though: Who is going to do the rating? What are the costs involved in the exercise? Do the costs justify the result or output of the rating exercise? How will different stakeholders use the results of the ratings? Do we need different rating tools for different stakeholders?
Right now, let’s discuss the questions on the usability and relevance of ratings to different stakeholders. I would also welcome all readers to question or comment.
How will different stakeholders use the ratings and do we need different rating tools for different stakeholders?
This is the most important question. It will determine the way in which rating tools are devised. I feel that the tools need to be developed taking into consideration specific needs of different stakeholders. Major stakeholders here are parents, schools owners/management, service providers, banks/lending institutions, investors, not-for-profits.
The parents will want to rate the schools on parameters of how well their children are learning, school facilities, emphasis on physical education/extra-curricular activities. The school owners might want to know how well they are functioning or what things are lacking in the management of the school. The not-for-profits might be looking for underprivileged schools where they might be able to intervene and create a social impact. The investors might want highly evolved data/analysis about the future potential of a particular school. A “one size fits all” solution just won’t work in such a scenario.
I very strongly feel that the rating methodology and tools should be developed keeping the stakeholders in mind. We might want to think about a range of tools to achieve specific objectives. On one end of the spectrum there can be simple to use, freely available tools for basic analysis like the ASER tools. The other end can comprise of highly evolved, sophisticated tools that provide insightful information about the investment potential of the school or provide some sort of “credit rating” which will help in investment decisions of banks and investment companies.
To my mind, one thing is for sure, no one-size-fits-all model will work here.
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Comments
Tarun, you have a valid point. But, the missing link is the Governemtn's will to enforce the mandate of right to education. Ratings will take affordable education to the next phase, but the issue lies in the cost of being rated. The government need to promote two separate funds, but keep beuraucracy out of it. A better thing to do would be to rope in industry experts to manage the fund and its sensible deployment.
While the first fund would aim at capacity building, which would invlove partly or fully subsidising the rating costs. Here, partly or fully should depend on the type of school into consideration. If the school is government owned the cost should be borne in full by the central government or shared between the central and state goverment, as the case may be. For the second set of schools, which are privately owned, the government has to work out a cost sharing mechanism depending on the student population, average fee per student, and similar parameters. A single stick approach will just lead to chaos and eat away time. The other advantage is that it would bring in more governance into the schools at large, since you are taking them through an audit-like process. Needless to say, the processes have to be rigorous in their way. The end result - rated schools will make it easier for the second fund, which is enable the right to education mandate, to deploy resources to cherry picked schools in a need based manner.
If enforcing the mandate, for some reasons, happens in an adhoc fashion, we won't have to wait for long to unearth another scandal - in the name of education.
And most importantly, with due respect to the urban - rural divide, there is alarming need to bring rural children in the education fold. This is help in the long run to tame unrests which have been grabbing headline off-late.
Hello Rajiv, I agree to your concern about the implementation of the ratings tool. A great idea can be totally wasted if it is not implemented properly. You also bring out an interesting aspect of government setting up a fund that will drive ratings for government & government-aided schools.
The cost aspect also plays a significant role. In fact the key to promote ratings and making them universal will hinge on how cost-effective the rating process gets.
I also feel that most of us agree on the importance and relevance of the ratings tool. What is needed next is to chart out a plan of action for universalization of ratings and involving all possible types of schools operating in the country.
However, universalization will be more relevant once the rating methodology and its components are finalized and agreed upon by all stakeholders.
I expect more refinements to be made to the rating methodology in coming years before the near-perfect process is evolved. Current efforts are pointing to this direction and we hope to see more and more interest by various players in the way the ratings experiment progresses.
Tarun, on the contrary one tool could exist that produces stakeholder specific consumer reports. Take for example the ratings of hotels. The evaluation or assessment process (their tool) is standard across the industry, however the end products are customized towards each stakeholder: customers receive a very brief grade of the hotel whereas hotel managers may receive a detailed analysis that supports the rating. I would assume that this concept would apply to a school rating as well.