Education is in a mess. The educational system will continue to produce each year a youth population unable or unwilling to fill the jobs available in the economy. The degree factories annually produce a large number of graduates who can’t find jobs to suit their educational achievements and consequent aspirations. They rebel against society and have struck out violently, twice in the last three decades.

Free education may be a noble ideal. But it has produced unforeseen and unmanageable consequences. There is also the state monopoly in education dented slightly by the setting up of international schools. All monopolies are bad and state monopolies are no better. There is the debate about mother tongue versus English as the medium of education. It is necessary to strike a balance between the need to safeguard and develop the national languages and the need to acquire modern knowledge and technology.

During the colonial period our well to do sent their children to England to become doctors, lawyers and accountants while the Japanese went to learn engineering and modern technology to come back and make the sophisticated goods produced by the West.

The elite requires modern knowledge and technology not the masses. So why do we want to teach English to the masses? Because we are enamoured of equality and equity. We want everybody to be able to get the best-paid jobs and we like equality. But equality of outcomes is an impossibility since we are born with different talents and abilities and vary in intelligence. Equality of incomes and wealth cannot be achieved unless by force. There can be no equality if some are born free to work harder, longer and smarter. Nor can some people be allowed to save and invest and get larger incomes in the future.

Equality can be maintained only by force. Those who work harder should be paid the same as the idlers and the idlers executed in the last resort. No one should be allowed to work better than others. Don’t excel others should be the motto. Since no one will want to do unpleasant work like that of garbage collectors or even as carpenters and masons, some persons will have to be forced to do these jobs required by society. The Khmer Rouge had to do just that when they tried enforcing equality in Cambodia. They had to kill 2 million people to do so.

Of course there should be equality of opportunity to enable any one born to whatever circumstances but who has the intelligence and ability to benefit from education, particularly higher education and to enter the elite. But even this has a cost. C. W. W. Kannangara set up central schools to provide greater equality of opportunity and this was an affordable cost. But those Ministers of Education who boasted of making village schools Royal Colleges were talking through their hats. Has free education provided greater equality of opportunity? No, since those who enter the universities seem to depend on tuition for which they are paying.

See how those who are better-off, pay their way illegally to the popular schools in the City and the district capitals edging out the poor who are resident close to such schools and who are entitled to enter them. Rural children are stuck in dilapidated, rotten under-funded classrooms. So much for the equity of free education which the middle class swears by, being the sole beneficiaries while pretending it benefits the poor.

Schools in rural areas are being closed down for lack of pupils while there is an unmanageable rush for admissions to the City schools. Educationists respond to the critics by repeating the manthram of ‘national system of education’ or the lack of planning as stated by a former Professor of Education. But a state lacking adequate resources and spending borrowed money which has to be spread over multifarious activities, cannot allocate sufficient money to develop the schools. Even if there was long term planning to cope with the increase in the school population such plans would remain on paper unless the financial resources are provided to implement them.

Yet more money is far less important than structural reform. Governments everywhere have discovered that even if they focus successfully on increasing supply they can never outpace demand in areas where the public chase a superior quality education. Better-off people not only want education but also a quality education and are prepared to pay for it.. So the demand for places in the popular schools is not a problem that could be tackled by supply side solutions as envisaged by the Professor of Education who wrote to the press.

We have instead to concentrate on how to manipulate the demand downwards so that the government won’t have to invest extra funds, which in any case it doesn’t have and is better spent in the rural areas. But demand management cannot be done without using prices or charging school fees, which reflect consumers’ choice. The usual objection to user fees or school fees is that they discriminate against the poor. The poor cannot afford to pay and so should not be called upon to pay. The gifted poor who are now deprived of obtaining a better quality education should be given scholarships to study in the better schools.

Whether there is discrimination against the poor or not will depend on how the revenue obtained from charging school fees in such schools is utilized. If the government charges a capitation fee for admission to the popular schools and uses such money to uplift the facilities in the rural schools and the less popular schools in the urban areas, no one can say the poor are being discriminated against.

Consider the admission policy. The rule says admission should be from a catchment area of 2 miles or so. But outside every school in Colombo is a stream of school vans showing destination boards 30-50 miles away. The government pretends that all is well with the policy. But people know how to beat unsustainable rules like the two-mile residence rule. They forge all the required evidence, setting the worst example of dishonest behaviour to their children who are aware of their parents’ well-meaning efforts for their welfare. These documents then have to be checked by the school - unproductive work known to economists as deadweight losses to the economy. The Government without recognising that the two-mile rule is unworkable sets the Bribery Commission to catch the principals who receive money to admit children.

How can the large disparity between the supply of vacancies and the demand for them be bridged? Economists say in such situations a market emerges whether such a market is legal or illegal, official or blackmarket. The minister and his cohorts all interfere in admissions and flout their own rules of admission. They expect the school principals to enforce the rule for others but not for their nominees.. It is in the principal’s interest to oblige the minister violating the area rule if he is to remain in the present station which provides him middle class comforts. But once he has violated the rule at the minister’s bidding he is guilty and runs no greater risk violating it many times more since he will be hanged whether he violates the rule once or a hundred times.

He may hope that the minister will protect him to keep his own misdemeanours secret. So why should he not take bribes to admit other children whose parents are ever willing to give. If he doesn’t take such bribes some one else will, perhaps the minister himself or cronies in his private office like the private secretary, co-ordinating secretary or other front men. It is an example of the rational pursuit of self-interest by the principal to take bribes in this situation. Is there a solution to the problem apart from a market-based one where a capitation fee is legally charged and used by the government instead of being pocketed by the principal?

The long-term remedy is of course to remove the state monopoly of education and allow screened individuals or organisations in the private sector including NGOs to construct fee-levying schools or take over and improve government schools. The present practice is for the principals to increase the size of the class, which must necessarily undermine the quality of education. So demand management rather than supply increase is the answer, an answer, which is rejected out of hand by those who think free education, is a sacred cow.

What’s wrong in asking people who want a better quality education than what is available in the usual state school to pay for it to state coffers instead of to the principals’ pocket?

It’s a misdirected kindness, even a form of hypocrisy, to harp on free education in the name of the poor while the middle classes alone enjoy the benefits in these schools. Customers should be able to choose the school without being restricted by the area rule. But this requires a capitation fee at least in the popular schools where demand exceeds the vacancies. In some countries including certain parts of USA there is a virtual market created through the introduction of educational vouchers, which carry a value, which will accrue to the school, which admits the pupils. But our bureaucratic structures have collapsed and such a change is not administratively feasible; at least not just yet. These vouchers allow the parents to choose between competing suppliers or providers of education and could be used to settle the capitation fee or school fees.

Market based incentives needed

If we applied market-oriented thinking to our education system, we could accomplish a great deal to have a more orderly and disciplined society without sacrificing equity. In fact we will have more funds then to target those who are now deprived of these benefits. It would also eliminate a source of corruption if those admitted to the popular schools were charged capitation fees. But the capitation fee should go to the government not to the principal.