Result of Education Reform: Social Segregation | Григорий Явлинский

A Service Industry or a National Idea?

Changes in this country and in society compel us, among other things, to take a different view of so important a sphere of human activity as education, to look for new answers to eternal, substantive, fundamental educational issues. Some of these “new answers” are worse than faulty. They are dangerous.

For instance, these days one hears increasingly often that education is a services industry. On the face of it there is nothing very dangerous in this sentiment. But it should certainly put us on guard. This is why: if we found education on market principles only and view schools as belonging in the sphere of educational services, we will inevitably start wondering how well investment in it will pay back and how it can be made to yield more profit. For surely this is a market economy law: any enterprise should bring maximum profit — even if the entrepreneur in question is the state. While investing in the educational services, it will also want to get something by way of income. In the most primitive sense of the word.

What is the danger there? Imagine a school building in the center of Moscow or some other big city. There are just two things that stand in the way of using this building with maximum efficiency: the students and the teachers. If they could be chucked out of the school building, which could then be converted into a casino, a fitness club or a trading center, that would certainly be a far more effective way of making so-called “short money.” I would like to cite the following example to illustrate a civilized attitude to education. Great Britain has two totally different education systems, English and Scottish. They differ in more than just the content; their chief difference is in their fundamental premises.

The English system sees itself precisely as a system of providing educational services. So it is highly mobile, diverse, with lots of specialized schools, schools for the middle class, expensive public schools. In this sense it is a perfectly sound market phenomenon.

In Scotland people feel differently about education. Possibly owing to the national traditions, or else because the Scots are a minority in the country and need to fortify their Scottish identity — whatever the reason, education there means rather more than merely purchasing educational services. You know, the usual sequence of paying your money, getting a certain knowledge package in return, efficiently investing this knowledge in work, and earning some profit. In Scotland, education is something else; it is a national priority, perhaps even a national idea. The result is positively astounding: although the wages are lower than in England, in Scotland there is no teacher shortage to speak of.

In Russia education has traditionally been regarded as something considerably more important than a commodity. The most eloquent proof of that is the 1990s when schools were neglected worse than ever before, and teachers in the provinces went unpaid for months on end. From a market point of view schools should have been closed, yet the teachers stayed on. Which underscores the fact that with Russian teachers their motivation for work is not a market one. I respect people who work at factories or in shops, but “selling knowledge,” in the parlance of today’s market ideologues, is obviously not the same as selling sausage. Teachers stayed on at schools because they felt responsible for their students… And even when they resorted to stoppages and hunger strikes, those were nothing like the strikes staged by drivers, air traffic controllers or factory workers. Because for a factory, industrial action is a normal acceptable form of settling conflicts between the employer and the employees. No problem there. But the moment when the teacher locked up his classroom and went on strike was of crucial importance. And frightening, too. It signified the beginning of an almost irreversible process in Russian education, with teachers being reduced to outcast status.

Something Waiting to Happen

Lately our Education Ministry has been very secretive for some reason. Apart from the minister, who does make the occasional statement in various places, and several other individuals periodically instructed to do likewise, no one seems to possess any information or is not entitled to making it public. To obtain a project or any facts is practically impossible. What documents are being drawn up, and when they are likely to surface is anybody’s guess. But something is clearly brewing. Creeping up on us, as it were.

What are the facts that make me think so? At present things are very odd in Russian education: the policies there are decided not by the Education Ministry but by three totally alien departments. The Ministry of Defense handles all issues related to giving military instruction at schools and at university military departments. But even more say in education rests with the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Economic Development. And this is extremely dangerous.

I feel profound respect for the professionals at the Finance Ministry, as well as for any other pros, but they are experts in a different area. Their market models may well be correct and eminently workable in other spheres, but they are absolutely wrong for education. Those people wish to invest every ruble with maximum effect. Granted. But what is efficiency in education? I do not expect Finance Ministry chaps to understand that — they are accountants, to a man, and they are not required to see the long-term perspective.

But the Economic Development Ministry specialists simply astonish me. They should know better than anyone else that investment in education in the 21st century is among the most profitable. This is no abstract speculation but calculations by the world’s top economists and respectable international centers. According to their estimates, in terms of cost-effectiveness investment in education today is second only to that in oil and gas.

O’kay, a good accountant’s job is to save his boss’s money by every available means. But a good economist surely must understand that penny-pinching in education is counter-productive. As for a good education minister, he should warn that, apart from anything else, this is extremely dangerous, and should do his best to oppose spending cuts in his sphere. But our education minister, alas, is himself actively seeking ways of money saving.

The Law on Education says that the state shall fund only the basic standard education. Now voices are heard at government sessions lamenting our schoolchildren’s overload, and demanding that the education standard should be reduced by 25 percent at the very least. Fine, the Finance Ministry people enthuse. So we can earmark 25 percent less money for education. And no one bothers to think what kind of “overload” is implied.

In fact, our insider debates have been stood on their head. Students’ overload has long been a commonplace everyone keeps repeating, never once stopping to think what it really means. Which the standard reduction initiators made good use of and even submitted to the government certain specific statistics. But few people noticed that what the research focused on was weekly hour overload. That is true. Our schoolchildren indeed spend on average more hours a week in classrooms than their European peers do. But if one counts not the weekly but the annual number of hours, the ratio will be reversed. Our kids enjoy much longer holidays, particularly in summer. Nowhere else in the world does the summer vacation last as long as that. It should also be remembered that the class hour varies from country to country. In France, say, it is not 45 but 55 minutes. Add up the lot, and you will see that in terms of annual hour numbers, our schoolchildren are anything but overworked. Simply our curricula are constructed that way. Whether this is good or bad, and whether cutting the holidays and distributing the lessons more evenly throughout the school year may be a good idea is a different matter, a purely pedagogical one, which ought to be discussed with psychologists and physiologists.

But our kids are certainly overworked in a different sense — in terms of the amount of concepts per hour. Now, that’s a problem, and no mistake. During a single math, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, etc. class they are given the amount of concepts, theories and other information that is impossible to take in and digest properly to be able to apply them. Hence, largely, our failure — Russia’s place in the third dozen of the world’s countries — according to the PISA international research where they test precisely the students’ ability to use knowledge in practice.

Indeed, in terms of the amount of concepts per unit of time our education standards must be reduced. But surely that does not mean that classroom hours must be reduced! Still less, that education funding can be slashed, especially considering that it is not exactly adequate now, putting it mildly.

Switching Over to Paid Tuition?

The Russian education system displays a pronounced drift toward paid tuition. Officially this policy has not been declared, but things are definitely moving that way. To see that, it is enough to follow a pretty unsophisticated logic of just three steps.

Step One. Talk of the possibility of introducing part payment in secondary schools. Our education minister already voiced the idea at a government session way back last December. This staggering news, much to my surprise, did not disconcert anyone in the least. Everyone just swallowed it whole.

Step Two. Suggested 25 percent cuts in the education standard.

Neither the first nor the second have been directly implemented. At least not yet. I suppose the reason was that in the days when they were made Russian old age pensioners rallied in the streets in defense of their social rights and privileges. While they were at it, they also protected, unbeknown to them, our education. Apparently fearing a repetition of protest rallies similar to the pensioners’ demos, the government has frozen solid many pseudo-market reforms then proposed in the social sphere. But these reforms have not been repealed or disavowed. Any moment now they can resurface. We need to foresee and forestall the danger. If these projects become reality, they will be far more difficult to fight, and remedying the situation will be much more of an uphill task.

And finally, Step Three. Very recently, on the eve of the new school year the education minister, speaking in Khabarovsk in the Far East, said that to solve their financial problems our schools should use the parents’ money, as well as that of some mythical sponsors schools have never had nor are likely to see in a hurry. Our parents will never be happy with truncated education for their children. They would sooner agree to pay extra. And that’s that; the upshot will be: at the very least the 25 percent of the education standard about to be slashed will be financed out of the parents’ pockets. For a start. And from there it’s a stone’s throw to fully paid tuition.

Basis for Social Hatred

In more or less prosperous and socially uniform countries such as France or Germany, partially paid education need not, quite possibly, affect the public mood too badly. Though it is precisely these countries that are moving in the opposite direction — of increasingly free tuition. But in Russia, where income gaps are appalling, partially paid education will spell disaster for schools and society.

The model implies that the children will attend a number of basic classes together, after which they will split into optional studies groups. But in reality the whole thing will look rather different. Imagine that you are a director of studies at an ordinary Russian school. You have forty kids starting school this year. It is known that the parents of twenty of them are prepared to pay for extra classes of math, Russian, etc., while the other twenty families do not wish to do so, cannot afford it, or just do not think it necessary. Naturally, the children of the paying parents will make up one class, all the rest — another. It is just that organizing the teaching process and drawing up a curriculum is a lot easier that way.

And herein lie the premises for segregation. It means that from their first days at school our pupils will be divided precisely into classes, in the most primitive sociopolitical sense of the word. From day one some of the children will feel inferior. There will be fewer lessons and substandard teachers in their grade. It is obvious, is it not, that a teacher who conducts more classes and is supposed to impart more profound knowledge generally has to have a broader outlook than the one sticking to the basic level. Where money is paid the standards will necessarily be higher, and the pupils more advanced.

In a school like that everything will be in Grades A and B, and the students will split into two antagonistic streams. I have always wondered how this antagonism starts — between Grade A and Grade B, given that the first-graders are divided into two groups in a perfectly haphazard fashion? Amazing. And now here we are providing for it a serious, very definite financial and social basis. That will be no simple confrontation. We will lay a foundation for social hatred.

That, moreover, at a time when throughout the civilized world it has been acknowledged that one of the tasks facing school, particularly in the 21st century, is precisely narrowing the gap between social strata. Certainly, all children are different. Their abilities differ, in terms of health, talent, and parents’ affluence. But that’s just what the noble mission of school is all about — to equalize at least to some extent the kids’ chances, giving a child from an underprivileged family the same starting opportunities, providing a species of social elevator for them.

Otherwise, What’s the Point of Having the State?

There is only one way of accomplishing this noble mission — to restore state guarantees to education.

A short while ago the president came out with a social initiative in education, saying that form-masters should be paid extra. This is odd, because it contravenes the Education Law. According to the law, it is not the state but the federation entity, the region, that handles education funding. And it is that entity that decides whether its teachers should be paid for form monitoring or not. No one can now go and order it to do anything. The state has lost these levers. But if we wish to have a single education space in the country, the state must get them back.

At the moment the country is switching over to the so-called normative funding of education. Which is very good, I think. Money will be sent to schools in proportion to the number of students they teach — so much per person. Normative funding will make money flows in education more transparent. Then it could be used more efficiently.

Here in Moscow per capita funding norms have been adopted that are different from the federal standards. We will have 19 kinds: for ordinary secondary schools; for grammar schools and for lyceum high schools, where subjects are taught on a higher level; for health schools, where handicapped children in need of medical supervision are trained; for military boarding schools where students are to have full board and uniforms, and so on. That is to say, we undertake to finance not only the basic standards of ordinary schools, but also all types of education.

Unlike Moscow, however, most other regions in Russia are subsidized from the federal center. So they will get their education money from this center. And there, as I have said already, the authorities intend to fund just the basic standard. How then will the different types of education be funded? It appears that the poorer the region, the more the parents there will have to pay to raise their school from the minimum level to at least the norm. If that is not cynicism, I would like to know what is.

The regions now have a lot of leeway, and that is fine. But what kind of single education space will it be if Moscow will have one set of education laws (incidentally, form-masters here have always been paid extra, the extra pay has never been slashed), and its own funding system, the Moscow Region will have a different set, the Ryazan Region will have something else again…

Another necessary and correct experiment is transition to specialized education. Moreover, it looks like this is the only experiment in the area born not in bureaucrats’ offices but in response to society needs. Transition to specialized education means that the majority of senior grades at schools will specialize in the humanities, in mathematics, economics, law, etc.

Within the education community it is still being debated whether this is good or bad. Personally I have always been a great believer in specialization. And at the Education Academy grammar school, where I am working at present, to give just one example, there have always been specialized grades. Even when there were none in the Soviet Union. Today it has become blindingly obvious that this is what society needs. We cannot go against this trend. In one way or another, schools must meet society’s needs, and society needs are just that — specialization.

It is great that the state has at long last recognized transition to specialized education a part of the state’s education policies, and even declared itself willing to make it. But specialized education also means that schools must have extra classes. That is the basic standard — say, four math classes a week — plus another four, if this is a specialized math grade.

If the state confines itself to funding only the standard amount, who will fund the rest? The parents? But they can make sure that their children learn more about a subject anyway, if they wish. They will find and pay a private tutor. But where does the state come in? Surely, if specialization is declared a state policy, it should also be funded from the public purse?

People in this country are generally fond of talking for effect. For instance, the education minister has been recently beating his breast because, I quote, “teachers’ wages are a disgrace for the nation.” Having said which, he once again invited schools to make use of parents’ and sponsors’ money. But if this is a disgrace for the nation, the country should spend the national budget money to live it down.

We are told: there is no money. For a start, I cannot believe that this is still the case. Not with our enormous stabilization fund, and the hefty budget surplus… Budget surplus means precisely that the state has money enough and to spare that it does not quite know what to spend on. Something the whole country knows only too well, though not those responsible for it.

Also, even if this is true and there is not enough money for everything, there can be another way of looking at it. For instance, we can be told that education funding is indeed the job of the state, but at present the state can cover just 80 percent of the expenses. Sorry, folks, we’ll try to do better in the future. This is one stand, and it can at least be understood.

But what is being said is this: education is your problem; very well then, we’ll help you but we’ll fund just the barest minimum. The rest is up to you. This is a very different stand; this is disclaiming responsibility for school, i.e. for our future.

Please do not misunderstand me: I am not against voluntary donations from the parents. This is normal civilized practice that has always been a fact of life anywhere. It is another matter that voluntary is what they must be. Possibly even anonymous. And certainly utterly transparent and controllable. But that does not in any way imply that the state can evade responsibility for education.

It is my conviction that, apart from the basic standard, the state must also pay for variety in types of school and for the specialization it has declared its education policy. One way of doing this is through funding norm differentiation, like in Moscow. Parents and sponsors’ donations can go to pay for redecoration or school guards. But parents must not be forced to pay for their children’s classes. Education should remain a duty, guarantee and, if you will, privilege of the state. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a state at all?