A school is in the news because it sold for ₹1000 crore (~ 100 million USD) or some ungodly number. “How can we monetize this noble undertaking!” is one take on it.
But I think (and I’m not alone in this) that there should be public schools funded by the government and private schools that are businesses, because it allows for continuous innovation and experimentation and all that. India’s demographic disaster and its hundred million unemployed graduates are evidence enough.
It would be amazing for the government to offer great “schooling” free of cost, or very subsidized. It’s undeniably a national good. But we’ve tried for 80 years (in India) and it’s been an undeniable unmitigated disaster. We ranked bottom of the pile in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) across 75 countries a decade ago. The great news is now we are nowhere close to the bottom now!. Because we are too embarassed to participate and pulled out.
Public schooling in any large country suffers from standardization one-size-fits-all doing justice to no one. In India in particular, with it incredible inequality, linguistic and cultural diversity, it is even counterproductive. Meaning making is the foundation of learning. And meaning is rooted in our cultural setting. Standardization while well-intentioned takes it all away. We’ve tried for 80 years and failed and the heroic combination of good intentions and bureaucratic dictacts and money cannot change that.
So we, more than any country, need private players in education who make education a business and offer choice at the local and national level. Make policy changes to let a million microschools and schools bloom. And let them function as businesses that are answerable to their customers.
But the funny thing is, businesses have a clear product, and schools don’t.
Coaching centers do (rank in a competitive exam) and that’s great for a business model, even if it’s absolutely sucky for the child. But it’s still a clear business model.
We should probably ban them, and ban exams that essentially espouse a zero-sum worldview, that there are only a few thousand people worthy of winning in a country as massive as ours. But it’s still a clear business model.
What about schools? Is it marks? (Reductive and bad.) Is it well-being? (Should be, but how do we measure it?) Is it outcomes in life? (So varied and so far out.)
For me, as a parent who set up a microschool, the outcome is happiness, and preserving childhood. And this is because kids can and will learn on their own when the environment allows them to. That’s not a business model though. And so we have schools that point to their swimming pool and SEL slide deck. Tangible and clear, but pretty poor proxies for learning.
What’s close to this? Healthcare? Religion and spirituality are probably closer. There are bad players and good players. The end goals and business metrics are both nebulous and numerous.
What’s very interesting though, and more so in the age of AI, is that these are also collective goals, and pursuing them as a community makes more sense. There’s meaning in being, and being able to feel it is enough for the “customers.”
And so we move on.