Tim Worstall

Geo. Brown on Aid.

El Gordo says a lot of useful things in this piece on aid. Debt forgivness (we’re talking about those who would never repay anyway), vaccines, front loading of the money to pay for such, pulling down rich country trade barriers, especially in agriculture, all good stuff. ButI’m a little puzzled by this:

…but for social empowerment through universal free schooling and healthcare.
…
So our new resolution for every country must be universal free
education – the best and most empowering investment we could ever make.

Now of course there is no such thing as free education or free health care. There is free at the point of use, but that’s not quite the same thing. It has to be paid for by someone, somewhere.

The question, rather, is who should it be paid by and in what manner? What he’s (I assume) suggesting is that education and health care should be paid for by either aid or taxes, channelled through the State structure. Which doesn’t, in many poor countries, sound like a very good idea. Are we really serious in thinking that, say, sending the money through the pockets of a Nigerian State Governor is going to provide a better education than parents themselves paying whatever groats they can?

Does experience on the ground in such hugely corrupt countries show that this is indeed the best way of financing education?

It’s a nice thing to say, that of course education and health care should be "free" to the poor, that this is a hallmark of a just and fair society. But with some of the people running some of those places it may not actually provide much health care or much education.

In

13 responses

  1. Luis Enrique Avatar
    Luis Enrique

    Are we really serious in thinking that, say, sending the money through the pockets of a Nigerian State Governor is going to provide a better education than parents themselves paying whatever groats they can?
    Maybe. I mean if the ‘whatever groats’ the majoriry of parents have is next to none, and the funding given to free-to-use state run education is well designed and supervised (as well as can be expected) then yes, sending money through the Nigerian State governor might provide a better education than parents paying for it themselves.
    What would you suggesting anyway, that private education is best for Africa? That’s a bit bonkers isn’t it?
    Tim adds: There have been a number of pieces recently, I think one was in the NYT, showing that yes, private education in Africa was indeed better than State.
    The key is in “well designed and supervised”. This might come as a shock but there are parts of Africa where that is not possible through the State.

    Reply
  2. Rub-a-dub Avatar
    Rub-a-dub

    What would you be suggesting anyway, that private education is best for Africa? That’s a bit bonkers isn’t it?
    No. Just beyond your comprehension, it seems.

    Reply
  3. Luis Enrique Avatar
    Luis Enrique

    ooh … smackdown!

    Reply
  4. JohnM Avatar
    JohnM

    Here’s a bonkers article arguing the case for private education in Africa. Seems it provides better education for poor people

    Reply
  5. Brian Hughes Avatar
    Brian Hughes

    Perhaps the smart Rub-a-dub favours a voucher system for Nigeria. That should create some nice bureaucracy, but private bureaucracy’s good ‘cos everything private is good.

    Reply
  6. Luis Enrique Avatar
    Luis Enrique

    JohnM, thanks for the link to that very interesting article. How nice to come across something that I previously had no comprehension of!
    I am surprised to discover that private schools can charge fees that are within the reach of the poor. I’ve got doubts about the quality of the teaching and conditions for students, but the researchers in that article found they were better than the existing state alternative, so that worry is perhaps dealt with.
    I’m sure that there will be some problems with these private schools (other reseachers could no doubt seek out examples of bad practises etc. among these private schools should they want to) but on the evidence of this article it cetainly looks like they are something to be encouraged (and perhaps preferable to trying to fix the state system).
    I wonder if anything can be done – either by aid agencies or by the local government – to help them, or is the best solution to leave them alone to get on with it? I suppose allowing them to offer recognised examinations would be an idea.
    I don’t know, but I suspect that if we had absolutely private (unsubsidised) eduction in the UK (as the article describes )then anything like a decent education would be unaffordable to many of us. What’s the UK median income – £24,000 or something like it? – how much could most parents spare from that (let alone those earning less) and how much education would it buy?
    So say the Kenyan government, for example, did just leave the private sector to get on with it (providing limited assistance such as standards bodies), and for the sake of argument, the Kenyan economy was to grow and average incomes rise, what would happen to private education? Could it raise its standards whilst staying affordable to the poor?

    Reply
  7. JohnM Avatar
    JohnM

    I don’t know, but I suspect that if we had absolutely private (unsubsidised) eduction in the UK (as the article describes )then anything like a decent education would be unaffordable to many of us. What’s the UK median income – £24,000 or something like it? – how much could most parents spare from that (let alone those earning less) and how much education would it buy?
    You have to take into account two facts
    1. if education ceased to be a government concern then taxes would cease to be needed for that purpose. The average person already spends substantial amounts on education.
    2. I can’t find the link now but I remember reading that at most private schools the cost per pupil is not dramatically different than than for state schools.
    That doesn’t mean that everything would be perfect. The tax regime has a redistributive effect. We would need to find a system that handed each parent the same spending power per pupil.
    Interestingly, in 1890 when education came to be mandatory in the UK, approximately 97-99% of people attended school. These schools were either paid for for the parents, by charity or more usually both. I guess it’s uncontroversial to say that people were poorer then than now.
    Tim adds: “Poorer then? Rubbish. Income disparity was much lower so people were actually richer!” P. Toynbee.

    Reply
  8. Luis Enrique Avatar
    Luis Enrique

    I take your point that, on aggregate, we are paying for it anyway, and without the public sector overhead, it could all be done more cheaply (or to a higher quality).
    I have worries about how private eductation might work (mainly potential market failures of one sort of another) but that’s a different topic.

    Reply
  9. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    It’s not bonkers; JK Galbraith’s “The Nature of Mass Poverty” explains why all sorts of inegalitarian policies which would be ludicrously inefficient in a first world country make a lot more sense in a Third World context.
    One doesn’t even have to make use of rather stereotyped arguments about corruption; it’s just that providing a “free” education to someone who is planning to spend his life as a farmer is probably a waste of resources – if someone who has been taught to read doesn’t keep on reading after he leaves school, then he will most likely be functionally illiterate again within five years. The private education model ensures that the education goes to people who at least plan to do something with it, leaving aid resources available for antimalaria programs and other stuff that can genuinely be a universal benefit.
    By the way I would like to see a source for that factoid about 99% of British children (presumably not “people”) attending school in 1890. Since the Education Act was passed in 1870 and there had been twenty years of publicly funded education (under the 1870 Act any district that wanted one could vote to have a School Board and the School Board could provide for schools out of the rates if it thought there weren’t enough schools provided by voluntary societies) I’m guessing that it has got garbled in transmission at the very least.

    Reply
  10. The Remittance Man Avatar
    The Remittance Man

    Since this topic is about Africee and I do have some little experience of that benighted continent, may I contribute a few thoughts?
    First up, SA is not Nigeria or the Congo, but we also have a few of the continent’s problems down here.
    Unfirable teachers who turn up for work drunk, treat their female pupils as sex slaves or fail to turn up for work at all are a big problem. So are illiterate English teachers, innumerate maths teachers and science teachers who wouldn’t know a bunsen burner from a toilet brush.
    We have an education bureaucracy staffed by jobsworths who often fail in the most basic ways like failing to order the relevant text books on time for the start of the school year or not getting the right exam papers to the right schools on exam day. We won’t even mention the selling of exam answers. They are, however, very able to organise week-long workshops at the local hotel and conference centre though. All expenses picked up by the department of course. My chum, Frikkie is very pleased he bought the place and did it up. So’s his wife, she got a brand new merc for Christmas.
    But worst of all we have a well meaning, if deluded, government desperate to impose the latest, first-world teaching initiatives on a ramshackle organisation. These are forced on an unwilling and unprepared teaching staff and frequently they fail. The state cannot admit this though. There are too many repuataions and egos at stake. So we have grade inflation and meaningless qualifications.
    For proof of the latter contention I offer the example of four candidates who applied for a post as a basic level truck fleet controller. This is a job that requires an ability to assess the movement of traffic in an open pit. The real skills would have been taught on the job, we were just looking for aptitude. None could solve basic maths questions involving relative vehicle speeds.
    And so you don’t think this is an isolated incident, we’ve had new survey assistants who had to be taught how to use a tape measure; lab technicians who had to be taught the difference between a litre and a millilitre and truck operators who did not understand the concept of braking distance.
    All these guys had been to government schools. All had matric certificates (academically the equivalent of GCSE’s or AO levels but taken at age 18) stating they were competent at maths and science. According to all the psychometric tests we put potential recruits through, these kids weren’t thick, most had inherent maths abilities. But, boy, had someone conned them with their education! Since they were the best candidates available, we, a private company, were landed with the costs and hassles of making up for the failure of the state.
    Pouring money into most African government coffers is worse than pouring it into first world treasuries and is not the solution. Somehow we have to find a better way. And if the state is not the answer then there is only some sort of private solution left. Maybe it won’t be better, but it can’t be worse.
    RM

    Reply
  11. Luis Enrique Avatar
    Luis Enrique

    Private education, an “inegalitarian polic[y] which would be ludicrously inefficient in a first world country”
    you’re just trying to get a rise now aren’t you

    Reply
  12. Auntymarianne Avatar
    Auntymarianne

    Coming off education and onto healthcare in developing countries, what we do at work is give the money to NGOs to spend, thereby neatly bypassing corruptible government officials, and providing healthcare free at point of delivery to poorest and most needy, especially mothers and children. Before anyone blathers sceptically about how much actually gets to the beneficiaries, 7% of the funds goes on administrative costs, the other 93% is all healthcare and the cost of delivering care (shipping medicines, training nurses, etc etc). We then audit the NGOs. All of ’em. For all the projects.
    Education is sadly not in our remit, but if it were, I would recommend the method mentioned above. There are OTHER ways of managing healthcare and education than government or private enterprise.

    Reply
  13. JohnM Avatar
    JohnM

    dsquared
    My factoid is from memory. It may be that I was thinking of the 1870 act. I seem to recall one act making public provision possible and another making attendance compulsory. Privately provided schools for the poor lingered on for many years but they were basically strangled by the free state schools. Another parallel with Africa is that the state schools also suffered from a “they are worse” reputation.
    If I wasn’t at work I would get you a link. Maybe search at James Bartholomews website “Welfare State We’re In”.
    The basic point is that attendance was surprisingly high. And don’t forget that in those days many institutions besides day schools supported some form of education. Trade Unions were heavily involved in Working Men’s institutes. I seem to recall that literacy was very high amongst miners. Again you might find a relevant link on Harry’s Place lamenting the end of involvement by unions in such activities.

    Reply

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