Headline, December05, 2013

''' Parental Choice -EDUCATION​- And 

Standards '''

Few ideas are more  controversial  than vouchers  -letting parents choose to educate their children wherever they wish at the taxpayer's expense.

First suggested by Nobel Prize Economist Milton Friedman, in 1995, the principle is compellingly simple. The state pays, parents choose, schools compete; the standards rise; everybody gains.

Simple, perhaps, but it has aroused predictable   -and often fatal- opposition from the educational establishment. Letting parents choose where to educate their children is a silly idea; professionals know best. 

Co-operation, not competition is the way to improve education for all.

Vouchers would increase inequality because children who are hardest to teach would be left behind  

But these ideas are now succumbing to sheer weight of evidence. Vouchers schemes are running in several different countries without ill-effects for social cohesion; those that use a lottery to hand-out vouchers, offer proof that recipients get a better education than those that do not.

Harry Patrinos, an education economist at the World Bank, cites a Colombian programme to broaden access to secondary schooling, known as PACES, a 1990s initiative that provided over 125,000 poor children with vouchers worth around half the cost of private secondary school.

Crucially, there were more applicants than vouchers. The programme, which selected children by lottery, provided researchers with an almost perfect experiment, akin to the  ''pill-placebo''  studies used to judge the efficacy of new medicines. 

The subsequent results show that the children who received vouchers were 15-20% more likely to finish secondary education, five percentage points less likely to repeat a grade, scored a bit better on scholastic tests and were much more likely to take college entrance exams.

Voucher programmes in several American states have been run along similar lines. Greg Forster, a statistician at the Friedman Foundation, a charity advocating universal vouchers, says there have been eight similar studies in America; 

seven showed statistically significant positive results for the lucky voucher winners; the eighth also showed positive results but was not designed well enough to count.

The voucher pupils did better even though the state spent less than it would have done had the children been educated in normal state schools. American voucher schemes typically offer private schools around half of what the state would spend if the pupils stayed in public schools.

The Colombian programme did not even set out to offer better schooling than was available in the state sector; the aim was simply to raise enrolment rates as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

These results are important because they strip out other influences. Home, neighbourhood, and natural ability all affect results more than which school a child attends. If the pupils who received vouchers differ from those who don't   

-perhaps simply by coming from the sort-of go-getting family that elbows its way to the front of every queue........

And any  effect might simply be the result of any number of other factors. But assigning the vouchers randomly guarded against this risk.

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With respectful dedication to Rohail Hayat/ Pakistan/  COKE STUDIO  for innovation, and mastery, :  in composing world class music.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of 

Thailand. See Ya all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' A New Dawn '''

Good Night & God Bless!

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