Making Education Affordable
- imran ali
- Oct 10, 2022
- 4 min read
Traditional Education is very expensive; no matter whether it works or not. According to the world bank, US spent $11,841 per year on a primary student; similar expenditure is reported for other developed countries like Australia, UK, and many more. However, lavish spending on education does not mean it's used wisely. As shown below, most of the money is not spent on teachers; most is spent indirectly on things that have nothing to do with learning (I am not saying that it is completely useless, but the indirect costs can be re-evaluated).
Although the money spent by these developed countries is not wise, still it will derive some benefits for the students and consequently for the country. However, what would be the scenario in developing countries like Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan? In 2017, Pakistan’s government spent only $12.2 per student each month. This has led to the continuous development of private institutions. The exorbitant fees charged by these institutions create an uneven distribution of educated citizens in Pakistan (similar is the case for other developing countries).
In the book One World School House, the founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan discusses 2 key ideas. First, how schools can reduce the amount spent on each student. Second, how education can be made accessible to all (or much higher scale) in developing countries.
How to make education economical?
Instead of being obsessed with numbers/quantity, schools must rethink the metrics. The goal must be to optimize the resources they have rather than adding more.
Remember the war between iPhone and android…. iPhone wins not because of a larger battery or higher megapixel camera; it wins because of better integration and optimization of all the components.
Similarly, in education, we need to reconsider the following two metrics that help in the reduction of expenditure per student.
1. Student-teacher valuable time vs student-teacher ratio
The major focus of students is on the student-teacher ratio which actually is not very helpful. As mentioned in my previous post that learning is a physical process; we learn quickly by actively engaging with concepts, drawing connections and repeating the lessons learnt again.
Therefore, the goal must be to switch from broadcast lectures to active learning (flipping classrooms). Instead of focusing on hiring more teachers, our focus should be on changing the teaching strategy. We need to actively question the traditions followed in our education system rather than continuing to follow them.
2. Enlightened use of technology vs adding technology
The goal must be to integrate technology into our system. Schools should focus on the learning of students rather than just adding the most recent versions of computers in schools. As written by the professor of Duke University:
If you change the technology but not the method of learning, then you are throwing good money after bad practice. [The iPad] is not a classroom learning tool unless you restructure the classroom. The metrics, the methods, the goals and the assessments all need to change.
What if we use technology to encourage students to learn at their own pace, focus on mastery learning, and use software (Khan Academy’s software or any other custom-built) and data analytics to predict the shortcoming of students? What if teachers use these insights to make an informed decision about investing time in individual students?
The technology that is cheaply available in today’s world can help teachers liberate from redundant tasks like attendance, homework checking, and taking surprise tests. This will consequently help to improve student-teacher valuable time.
Increasing access of education at all levels
In most of developing countries, schools are not considered the primary source of learning. However, the opposite is quite true. Education happens mostly after school through private tuition. Tuitions are considered necessary and even low-income families have to consider this option. Combined school and tuition fees become very expensive for a lot of families in these developing countries but they manage it in the hope of a better future for their kids.
The tutors are not trained professionals but are higher-grade students themselves. What if we can work around establishing an alternative model that is far more comprehensive, and designed up to a proven international standard? Where everyone - wealthy and poor can get benefits.
The solution proposed by the author is to build computer centres, a nice and comfortable room with fully functional computers and a fast internet connection. These computer centres will charge fees from students according to their financial constraints (students from the lower class will be offered the services for free). However, in any case, the charged fees will be substantially lower than what an inexperienced tutor charges. This model will have two advantages:
The school-going students can take responsibility for their own education and may become lifelong learners ( a must-have characteristic in today’s economy).
Students from middle-class families can finance the education of students from the lower class.
Although students from poor families may not get the same experience as a school-going kid, this opportunity can still prove beneficial for these students.
Being a resident of Pakistan, I can reflect on strategies that are mentioned in the book and the ideas are quite implementable. In Karachi, a city in Pakistan, there are a lot of huge government schools. These schools can be used to develop fully equipped computer centres.
In the past, the government took initiative to distribute laptops encouraging learning among students. This means installing laptops in the computer centres is also possible.
In the last, I would like to say that education is a basic necessity for everyone, who knows where genius will crop up? There may be a young girl in a village with the potential to find a cancer cure. Why would we allow their talents to be wasted?
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