Masum Billah :
The concept of Public Private Partnership (PPP) lies in an approach used by government to deliver quality services to its population by using the expertise of the private sector. The World Economic Forum defines the Public Private Partnership as a voluntary
alliance between various actors from different sectors where both agree to work
together to reach a common goal or to fulfil a specific need that involves shared
responsibilities. In terms of education, the rationale for PPP adoption is to supplement government schools’ limited capacity and expand educational access by incorporating private providers into the public sector. In return, the private party receives a fee from the government according to pre-determined performance criteria. Such payment may come out of the user charges or through the government budget or a combination of both.
A variety of public private partnership already exists around the world and PPP for education is found in the 2000 World Bank and the Asian Development Bank joint report. Of course, the MPO system in Bangladesh proves another model of public private partnership in education. We know about 98% secondary educational institutions are private and 95% of them receive government fund in the form of MPO. This is just about the salary of teachers and staff. Other areas of education such as infrastructure, administration and academic development can be shared both privately and publicly in an effective and meaningful manner. The World Bank, argues that PPPs can increase equity in education systems and improve education quality making service delivery effective and expanding possibilities for financing the education sector. Some governments buy services such as teacher training and curriculum design, while others contract for actual management of schools. Students in private schools outperform students in public schools on a variety of achievements. This is not a perceived idea rather it is a practical phenomenon in our country as well. Just look at our government primary schools that tells a sad story of quality education mainly because of their being state owned. In secondary schools, the private ones and those run by different authorities except the state, show enviable success and similar is the case with government owned higher educational institutions with some possible exceptions.
Public-private partnerships are increasingly perceived as an innovative approach to provide education for all and especially to provide the most vulnerable population with new educational opportunities. Many governments, international organizations and other key education stakeholders consider that, by partnering with the private sector, countries can expand their education systems in a more efficient, flexible and effective way. There are different reasons to embrace PPP schemes in education. PPPs in education are basically portrayed as cost-effective policy solutions to the access and quality issues that many education systems currently face, especially in low and middle-income countries. Drawing on public choice theory, the rationale behind this particular understanding of PPPs in education is that parents choose the best school for their children on the grounds of quality, which in turn puts pressure on schools to compete to attract students and to achieve better academic results at a lower cost.
Often low-income families, girls, indigenous peoples, and other poor and ma regionalized groups have only limited access to education. There are ways in which the public and private sectors can join together to complement each other ‘ s strengths in providing education services and helping developing countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals for education. The concept of a PPP will lead to the privatization of education and thus will reduce the government’s control over a public service. The existing evidence from around the world shows that the correlation between private provision of education and indicators of education quality is positive, which suggests that the private sector can deliver high-quality education at a low cost.
To establish transparency in the use and allocation of resources to schools and colleges, to make resource allocation more equitable and targeted to the poor, to increase the accountability of non-government institutions & to develop a more efficient management of secondary and higher secondary education with greater stakeholder involvement are the key objectives of this endeavor. The sheer scale of the challenge to improve the quality of education justifies the need to collaborate. Additionally, more than just working in parallel towards a common goal, the two sectors complement each other. Evidence shows that public-private partnerships (PPP) in education can increase program efficiency and transparency of public expenditures. Partnership strengthens institutional capacity, since the public sector can learn from private sector expertise. One particular benefit of this type of partnership is the introduction and expansion of successful education models in low-income areas.
PPP is also a risk-sharing relationship based upon an agreed aspiration between the public and private sectors to bring about a desired public policy outcome. More often than not this takes the form of a long-term and flexible relationship, usually underpinned by contract, for the delivery of a publicly funded service. Teachers of tiers irrespective of government and non-government must have financial solvency to satisfy their basic needs of the modern age. In order to ensure that, the way of financial management has created serious discrepancies among the teachers working in several types of educational institutions namely government, MPO enlisted, non-MPO, under big organanizations. All the teachers and educational institutions can be given a good shape in terms of their physical and academic environment by establishing a true and meaningful Public and Private Partnership scheme when the government treads very carefully in the of path nationalization.
(Masum Billah is Country Director, Voluntary Association for Bangladesh and President- English Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh).
