This article discusses the international challenge of educating the 263 million children in the world who are not in education and the part that both digital technologies and profit-making educational providers are likely to play in meeting this challenge.
The International Challenge
The past ten years have seen a rapid expansion in British curriculum education overseas. According to International Schools Consultancy (ISC Research), there are 5.15 million pupils studying at more than 9,854 English medium international schools around the world, of these more than 3,586 are British schools. In this time UK Independent schools have begun to establish overseas campuses which have focused on educating the rising middle classes.
Despite this rapid growth, there is still a huge shortfall in the provision of schooling from a global perspective. Arguably, the greatest challenge facing education today is that there are an estimated 263 million children who are not in education (UNESCO Institute of Statistics Fact Sheet October 2016, No.39). Furthermore, the same report estimates that the world will need 3.3 million more primary school teachers and 16.7 million more secondary teachers by 2030 to meet future demand.
Two important conclusions can be drawn from these projections. First, that the not-for-profit sector is not equipped to meet this level of demand; and, secondly, the traditional model of one teacher taking a class of 20-30 pupils is unsustainable – it is a luxury form of education which most developing societies cannot afford or achieve.
Not-for-profit and For-profit Education
Education in the West has traditionally been provided on a not-for-profit basis either by governments for state education; or, as in the case of most of the UK independent sector, by charitable organisations. State education provided by profit-making commercial companies is not common or popular in the West and is alien to the British psyche: a recent survey of parents by the Varkey Foundation found that UK parents are the least likely of parents surveyed in 29 countries to approve of private companies providing state-funded schools. Conversely, for-profit education is the norm in the aspirational developing world, so it is no surprise that Indian parents are the most likely to approve of private company involvement in education.
Experience in Dubai has shown that the not-for-profit sector was not equipped to cope with the rapid increase in demand for expatriate school places as the city grew in population. Consequently, the for-profit sector stepped in, adopting a segmented approach to the Dubai market place. The larger for-profit schools’ groups offer parents a choice of price points ranging from ‘premium’ to ‘budget’ The level of provision, which equates with the fees payable, are differentiated by class size, the provision of on-site facilities, the amount of contact time, and the calibre and experience of the teachers. The Dubai for-profit sector has developed scalable models which benefit from economies of scale and from centralised administrative and training functions.
For-profit schools’ groups, such as GEMS education, already see the developing world as a potential market and have begun to transfer the expertise gained from establishing schools in the Middle East to building and running schools on an ‘affordable model’ in India, South Asia and Africa. These firms have real potential to have a significant impact on the global demand for education over the coming years.
Alternative Models for Schooling – Commercial Investment in Online Learning
The sheer scale of the challenge of educating the hundreds of millions of children presently not in school, combined with the likely acute teacher shortage means that we need to find alternative models which extend the impact of a single teacher beyond the 20-30 students who are in their physical classroom. It is clear that digital technologies have the potential to play an important role to play in alleviating this pressure.
Global education is very big business - it was a $5 trillion industry in 2014 and is growing by about $600 billion a year. It is no surprise that commercial investors are lining up to step in to offer solutions that will harness technologies to drive the education system of the mid-twenty-first century. The investment by these firms means that online learning programmes are becoming increasingly sophisticated. They promise to do tasks currently performed by teachers by offering personalised learning experiences at a fraction of the present cost. Typically, the program ‘teaches’ a topic (through online videos and interactive exercises); then uses low-stakes testing to assess the student’s knowledge and understanding, highlighting areas of strengths and weakness; before recommending which courses or units to do next.
One of the great advantages of digital technologies over traditional industrial models is that they provide a cost-effective model for making education available on a huge scale. Once a digital lesson has been produced, the marginal cost of distributing it around the world approaches zero.
Ten years ago, it was unthinkable that mobile phones would transform local economies in Africa , yet today it is a reality. Is it unreasonable to suggest that in ten years’ time a large proportion of those hundreds of millions of children who currently are not in school, would have access to a basic education through the internet?
This article was published in The State of Independence Eds. David James and Jane Lunnon
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