Outsourced vendors in school

Many school leaderships have strong, opposing views about outsourcing. They either feel it is all good or all bad. Many see it as a way to increase quality, decrease cost and service problems, while others see it as a loss of jobs, poor quality and higher costs. Both views are filled with myths.

An outsourcing relationship doesn’t just happen overnight; it takes a lot of work, especially in the beginning. So what is the plan to “get it right the first time?” There isn’t a “one plan fits all” that you can go on a Website and download, but there are proven processes that can be followed. 

Outsourcing in the education arena is not new. Schools always have looked to private firms to provide certain services. What is different is an expansion of the types of services and the transition from local vendors to large corporations. Traditionally, only non-instructional student services were considered as possible targets for privatization. However, there is increased movement to privatize entire school systems via accounting systems, tech enabled teaching aids, branded physical education programmes, outbound activities etc. 

Some thoughts while going the outsourcing way

• Lowering Costs: “You can drive down student transportation costs.” So it can be with catering or books and uniforms.

• Administrative Time: School leaders, understandably, find it appealing to get the management of such duties as food services off their desks. Dealing with no instructional issues such as bus routes, cafeteria menus and complaints about school cleanliness distract school administrators from focusing on student learning.

• Quality Assurance: A particularly thorny problem for schools is how to ensure quality services while lowering costs and reducing administrative burden. Can it be done through outsourcing? Well, maybe. 

• Social Costs: Often unacknowledged are the ways in which outsourcing may impact the wider community. The practice of offering low wages is especially problematic. Veteran school employees are often forced to accept decreased wages with an outside firm or seek employment elsewhere.

• Limiting Flexibility: Like the weather, school days can be unpredictable. Outsourcing, however, can be an impediment to responding nimbly to altered circumstances.

• Complex Operations: Since the days when a local farmer was paid to transport students to and from school in his hay wagon, outsourcing has been a part of school operations. Outsourcing often can be the most practical and economical way to provide support services to schools — despite the cautions and caveats.

Vendor selection is one of critical decision-issues in the theoretical and practical circles. Given the multi-criteria nature of outsourcing vendor selection decision, there are nine factors, including, price, location, flexible contract terms, cultural match, reputation, existing relationship, commitment to quality, scope of resources, added capability, that should be considered for selecting outsourcing vendors.  

Understanding leads to improvement which in turn impacts quality. Let us go out improve and Develop Schools.

Private Coaching – Bane of Indian Education

Rita Wilson, Chief Editor

(Ex-chief executive and Secretary, ICSE)

The rising middle class, the desire to stay ahead in the global economy, and the falling quality of mainstream education system mean that examination-oriented coaching classes have taken over the life of most school-going children in India and other countries.

The rise in coaching classes is not only due to increase in incomes and the affordability of having private tuition, but also an intensification of the general conviction among the parents that private tuition is “unavoidable” with peer pressure building up on the students.

Majority of parents rely on private tuition for primary class and secondary class in addition to attending classes at school. Many parents say that they have to rely on tuitions at earliest due to lack of time or because they are ill-equipped to teach their children. For them, private coaching classes come in handy. Many of the better teachers of reputed schools and colleges have left their jobs and taken up private coaching, for the simple reason that the monthly income of good tutors is equal to the annual salaries of school teachers.

Many tutors report that parents want to compensate for deficiencies in the school system and want the private tutors to take care of the exam-anxiety factor among students. Examination phobia, too, has given a push to the private tuition industry. Many parents feel that private tuition provides that extra push when needed because school teachers have too many classes and too little time for individual attention.

The perception of parents of inadequacies in mainstream schooling, where teachers often do not come for classes or do not complete the curriculum, is a major reason for the growth of private coaching. Most of the content in the private coaching classes could and should have been taught in the regular classes of the primary schools.

Private coaching divides the student population into haves and have-nots; it makes teachers less responsible; it makes improvements in schooling arrangements more difficult since the more influential and better-placed families have less at stake in the quality of what is done in the schools.