PANEL DISCUSSION

Designing low-cost/affordable models for ECCE

The first panel discussion of the EducationWorld Early Childhood National Conference 2017 chaired by EW managing editor Summiya Yasmeen, featured a galaxy of experts in pre-primary education invited from across the country. The high-powered panel, which debated ‘Designing low-cost/affordable models for ECCE,’ comprised Nilesh Nimkar (NN), founder of the Quality Education Support Trust, a Palghar-based NGO which provides ECCE to 20,000 underprivileged children in rural Maharashtra; Priya Krishnan (PK), CEO of Founding Years Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd which has promoted the KLAY and Little Company day care centres and preschools in seven cities countrywide; Fatema Agarkar (FA), co-founder and CEO of KA EduAssociates, a Mumbai-based education management company and Vishesh Parnerkar (VP) of FSG, a US-based non-profit social impact consulting firm. Excerpts from the 60-minute parleys: 

SY: Contrary to Left propaganda, India has perhaps the world’s cheapest private education system. Currently, there are an estimated 300,000 private preschools offering early childhood care and education (ECCE) at all price points to 10 million children countrywide. The Central government also provides rudimentary ECCE to 80 million children in the 0-5 age group in its 1.34 million anganwadis established under the ICDS programme. According to a 2015 report of NITI Aayog, 51.8 percent of anganwadis suffer poor hygiene and sanitation conditions, teachers are ill-trained and the majority have no education programme.

What’s the alternative? In K-12 education as a response to poor quality government schools, an estimated 300,000 private budget schools with an enrolment of 60 million students have sprung up over the past two decades across the country. Can the private sector similarly provide bottom-of-the-pyramid parents an alternative to dysfunctional anganwadis at affordable cost? 

VP: Before I answer the question, I want to share some numbers. Recently, FSG conducted a survey in which we interviewed 4,300 households in the income bracket of Rs.10,000-25,000 per month in urban areas. Ninety percent of them said they are sending their children to private preschools. So from the perspective of parents, there is a perception that government anganwadis are not providing quality ECCE. From class I onwards, they prefer to enroll their children in private budget schools, most of which had also started kindergarten sections to cater to demand for preschool education. We tested some 200 children in budget primary schools who had received preschool education and found that 30 percent of them couldn’t read three-letter words or identify 1-20 numerals — competencies expected of children in class I. At FSG, we are actively exploring if high-quality service providers can help budget preschools improve children’s learning outcomes.

SY: Priya, as an investor in Hippocampus Learning Centres, a chain of 263 affordable private preschools sited in tier III towns and villages of Karnataka, what’s your comment? 

PK: In India, all households are willing to sacrifice a large proportion of income for their children’s education provided they know they are getting some value. So to answer your question whether quality ECCE can be provided at low cost, I believe yes. Hippocampus is a good example. It has succeeded in providing quality ECCE by training women in villages to provide care and education to youngest children.

FA: I believe technology is the answer to improving teacher training. Online technologies can be very useful to train teachers, particularly in remote villages and rural India where local women can be trained in ECCE. It is cheaper, and can significantly reduce teacher training costs for entrepreneurs. After World War II, the US faced a problem of providing low-cost housing to citizens. But solving it became the collective responsibility of the private sector and government. Private educators need government support to reach affordable education to the poor. This support can be by way of tax breaks, concessions, etc. Government and the private sector have to address this problem jointly and use new digital technologies to make preschool education affordable, while sustaining quality.

NN: We need to ask affordable by whom? We cannot link ECCE to affordability. In rural Maharashtra where I work, no household can afford to pay more than Rs.300 per month — which is the minimum tuition fee for running a preschool. The words ‘affordable’ and ‘low cost’ bother me because we already have perhaps the cheapest education system in the world. Therefore, tuition fees can’t go lower. And why do education discussions become a battle of private-versus-government education? Private education providers need to work with government to reach education to millions of deprived children. There are 1.34 million anganwadis countrywide. Why can’t private preschools share their know-how and expertise with them? Rather than getting into the government vs. private sector debate, wherever the child is, let us go to her together.

SY: But the government is not open to private sector assistance. It’s very difficult to work with government and its bureaucracy. In fact, public-private education partnerships in India have been a spectacular failure.

NN: I agree with you. It takes a lot of courage and perseverance for private preschool educators to work with government. But there’s no alternative if we want to scale up quickly and reach early childhood education to the country’s 164 million children under five years of age. We need to open a dialogue with the government and begin partnerships at local levels. Also, I want to make an observation about private affordable preschools: they tend to over-invest in infrastructure and materials but pay teachers ridiculously low salaries. This low-cost model is wrong. To dispense effective ECCE, we need high quality teachers — the rest is incidental. 

SY: Most government-run anganwadis and primary schools are sited on prime land. And land is often the biggest cost of private preschool education providers. So PPPs may help in offsetting land costs…

PK: PPPs in education is a very romantic notion. My question is why should the private sector lobby with government to improve government anganwadis? Why isn’t government taking the initiative? PPPs can work only when they are government-led and edupreneurs are invited to participate. 

FA: We have to address this problem jointly because 50 percent of children don’t have access to early childhood education. All the challenges in terms of poor learning outcomes in primary and high school are linked to neglect of ECCE. If we don’t address this challenge together now, 50 years later the quality of our workforce will be pathetic. We have excellent know-how and we must share it with government anganwadis. It has to be a collaborative effort.

NN: To answer Priya’s question, the private sector should help anganwadis because it has the know-how and can genuinely help in raising teaching-learning standards. Moreover, attitudes within the government are changing. Even rural anganwadis are facing stiff competition from private affordable preschools. So unless the government upgrades and improves its pre and primary schools, they may have to shut them down.

VP: Returning to the subject of the debate, i.e, can quality ECCE be provided at low cost, the answer is yes. I’ve visited preschool chains across the spectrum — from hi-end to affordable — and the surprising conclusion is that quality ECCE is not dependent on higher fees. Quality education can be provided when fees are as low as Rs.200-300 per month. 

SY: To conclude, private education providers can and should attempt to design models for children condemned to dysfunctional anganwadis. Given the scale of the national challenge, they need to practice enlightened capitalism. Also, the educators’ community and middle class need to speak up. We need to build the pressure of public opinion to force government to double annual education expenditure to 6 percent of GDP.