Catalog

A brief overview of education outcomes and policy in four countries

Of the four countries studied in this chapter, India is the least educated. Thais are slightly less educated than Indonesians, and Filipinos are the most highly educated (Figure 3.2.1). Three of the four countries have aggressively pursued increases in education levels, especially at the secondary level, during the period under consideration. Around 9% of Thai secondary education is privately provided. The corresponding figure is 20% for the Philippines, down from 32% in the mid—1990s, and roughly 40% for India and Indonesia (Table 3.2.1).

Indonesia's Government undertook a sharp increase in primary school building in the mid—1970s, backed by oil revenues. This included the abolition of fees for grades 1–3 in 1976 and grades 4–6 in 1978. This led to a substantial increase in enrollment rates (Duflo 2001). Notwithstanding these gains in primary attendance, lower and upper secondary enrollment rates actually contracted during the fifth Five—Year Plan (1989–1994), reflecting perceptions of low returns to secondary education and high out—of—pocket costs (Booth 1999). Lower secondary education was therefore declared compulsory in the mid—1990s, though 10 years on, schools are still being created to accommodate the increased attendance (Sugiyarto, Oey—Gardiner, and Triaswati 2006). Around 40% of secondary education in Indonesia therefore remains privately provided. For tertiary education, the figure rises to 65% (Table 3.2.1).

Similarly, the constitution of the Philippines (1987) committed the state to providing quality affordable education at all levels to all people, and Republic Act 6655 (1988) followed this up with a concrete policy of free secondary education. These changes do not appear to have led to an acceleration in graduation rates, which were already high. However, private secondary school attendance has fallen (Table 3.2.1). The 1974 Bilingual (English—Tagalog Program) Education Policy and its renewal in 1987 permitted the use of the "local vernaculars….as auxiliary to the media of instruction, but only when necessary to facilitate understanding of concepts being taught in English and Filipino" (Quisumbing 1989, p.311). The policy has resulted in a sharp decline in English proficiency across cohorts.

Education policy in the Philippines since the late 1970s has been driven by an explicit government policy to promote international migration as a solution to the local job creation problem, and a source of income (recorded transfers from migrants are as high as 10% of GDP) (Felipe and Lanzona 2006). Private vocational colleges, many of which operate as little more than "diploma mills," often connected to overseas employment agencies, have mushroomed. In combination with a trend toward opening state colleges (there were 19 in 1987, but 111 in 2006), this private—education expansion has led to a sharp rise in tertiary education, 66% of which is privately provided, and a polarization in quality. Moreover, the cost of the expansion into secondary and tertiary education, exacerbated by population pressure, has added to huge strains on education budgets and has drawn resources away from basic education (Maglen and Manasan 1998). Nevertheless, in the context of high unemployment, successive generations of Filipinos have continued to acquire increasing levels of education.

Thailand has historically had a difficult time expanding access to education, especially in rural areas. In the early 1990s, as low—skill industry boomed and as companies attempted to move up the value chain, limited availability of (especially) secondary graduates was viewed as a serious problem, and returns to education in the industry sector were high (Booth 1999; and Table 3.2.7 below). The Government responded. The 1997 constitution created a right to 12 years of free, quality basic education. The Education Act (1999) then extended mandatory schooling levels from 6 to 9 years. Together with rising income levels, which may have driven demand for secondary education, as well as tightening urban—rural linkages, such legislation led to significant expansions in secondary graduation rates in the 1990s and early 2000s. Education in Thailand remains mostly a public undertaking (Table 3.2.1).

Education policy in India has followed a different route. While by law education is free and compulsory up to the age of 14, in reality, only 53% of the labor force had completed primary school in 2004. The chief cause appears to be the abysmal quality of the primary education system (PROBE 1999, Pratham 2005). Primary enrollment rates have been extraordinarily low, particularly in rural areas, and among socially marginalized communities in both rural and urban settings. A sharp quality divide has emerged between public and private education, and a boom in urban working class incomes during the last decade has led to even tighter bottlenecks in admission to private education. Attempts to circumvent the quality problems in mainstream basic education through the promotion of vocational training also seem to have failed (Anant et al. 2006).

Meanwhile, India has cultivated a specialty in high—quality tertiary education. Graduates from elite, publicly supported science and technology institutes command impressive salaries, and aspirations to enter these institutions are high. Good private schools and colleges are also—increasingly—oversubscribed, as evidenced by the soaring "donations" for admissions through the 1990s. Given overwhelming evidence that the small number of high—quality tertiary institutions is becoming a bottleneck, the Government is under increasing pressure to liberalize tertiary education—particularly rules governing foreign participation. Instead, it has responded with an ambitious plan to double the number of places at central government universities in order to accommodate further expansions in affirmative action for disadvantaged groups (Hasan and Mehta 2006). Notwithstanding the importance of tertiary institutions for Indian output, enrollment rates are currently around 14%, and only around 7% of the Indian labor force is college educated.