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CERCular Vol.10, No.2, 2004 CERC’s International Research Consultancies and Collaboration The Private Costs of Public Schooling: Revisiting Patterns in Cambodia In 1997/98, Mark Bray conducted research in Cambodia under the umbrella of UNESCO, UNICEF and the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth & Sport. His work exposed the very high proportion of primary school costs met by households. Even in the public school system, households were meeting an estimated 59.0% of the total costs. The government and politicians provided 22.9%, and non-governmental organisations and external agencies provided 18.0%. The study, which was published in 1999 by UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, 1 made direct inputs to policy reform in Cambodia. It also attracted considerable international attention, partly because it showed a very striking pattern and partly because very few countries had data of this type. In 2004, Mark was invited to revisit Cambodia for a follow-up study. He was excited by this, because the task was to collect the same types of information from exactly the same sample of primary schools, and to extend the analysis to lower secondary schools. This time the work was funded by the World Bank, and undertaken in conjunction with Seng Bunly, an experienced consultant in Cambodia with excellent knowledge of the social sector. In all settings, collection of data on household costs is difficult. One problem is that householders may not have clear conceptions of their costs, and cannot easily express them on an annual basis that allows for seasonal variations. Further, even when householders do know their costs, they are not always willing to declare them openly and honestly. To address these challenges, the project employed enumerators to cross-check data from different sources and Mark Mason was invited by the East-West Center in Hawaii, along with four other visiting scholars from the Asia-Pacific region, to participate in a workshop as part of their “International Forum for Education 2020”. The role of the visiting scholars was, along with colleagues from the East-West Center, to contribute, by considering the intellectual context of education in today’s world, to the design and development of the East-West Center’s proposed leadership programme for educational leaders from the Asia- Pacific region. Mark’s role in this regard included the presentation of a paper on complexity theory and educational Mark Bray (cent re), and Seng Bunly (right ), in a project workshop, Takeo Province, May 2004 CERC collaborates with the East-West Center’s International Forum for Education 2020 18 to secure reliable estimates. The team then conducted workshops which brought together government officials, teachers, parents and community members. These workshops helped to verify data, examined the implications of the findings, and disseminated awareness of the study. Initial indications are that the policy reforms implemented as a consequence of Mark’s earlier study are enjoying success: it appears from preliminary analysis of the data that a significantly lower proportion of primary school costs are now being shouldered by households. In addition to the comparisons across time and across levels of education, the Cambodian work permitted comparisons across countries. One obvious comparison for Mark Bray was with the study he had undertaken the previous year in China’s Gansu Province. 2 In both places, governments and donor agencies are working hard to reduce household costs, especially for poor households. Policy-makers and practitioners face many continuing challenges, but Mark Bray’s work charts the way for further reforms and further progress. Notes: 1 Bray, Mark (1999): The Private Costs of Public Schooling: Household and Community Financing of Primary Education in Cambodia. Paris: UNESCO Institute for Educational Planning in association with UNICEF. 2 Bray, Mark, Ding Xiaohao & Huang Ping (2004): Reducing the Burden on the Poor: Household Costs of Basic Education in Gansu, China. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong in association with the Gansu Basic Education Project. change. In addition to this role, he is co-editing a book whose chapters will consider different aspects of the theme, “changing education in an increasingly interdependent world”. Mark’s invitation to contribute in these ways followed CERC’s hosting in December 2003, on behalf of the Faculty of Education, an earlier workshop along similar lines for the East-West Center. CERC is pleased to be able to continue its collaboration with an institute as prestigious as the East-West Center and looks forward to both the publication of the book and the launch of the leadership programme.
CERCular Vol.10, No.2, 2004 The Vietnam National Council on Education invited the CERC Director, Mark Mason, to contribute to their International Forum on Vietnam Education: Higher Education Reform. He presented a paper, Strategies and Solutions for Quality Higher Education: (1) Enhancing Learning Effectively, and (2) Initiating and Sustaining Educational Change, which was well received and stimulated considerable discussion at the forum. The forum was attended by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Education and Training, the Director General of the Vietnam National Council on Education, and other senior members of government, who participated actively throughout. The CERC’s International Research Consultancies and Collaboration In 1999, UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) published a book by Mark Bray entitled The Shadow Education System: Private Tutoring and its Implications for Planners. The metaphor of a shadow was used to describe private tutoring for several reasons: � private supplementary tutoring only exists because the mainstream education exists; � as the size and shape of the mainstream system change, so do the size and shape of supplementary tutoring; and � in almost all societies, much more public attention focuses on the mainstream than on its shadow. The book noted that large numbers of children receive supplementary tutoring, and that it has a particularly long history in East Asia. In Hong Kong, one survey found that 45% of primary, 26% of lower secondary, and 41% of upper secondary students received tutoring. A study in Seoul, Korea, found that 82% of primary and 66% of secondary school students were receiving tutoring. And in Japan, 70% of students have attended juku or received other forms of tutoring by the time they complete middle school. Tutoring in these societies consumes huge amounts of money, and has major implications both for mainstream schooling and for social stratification. In 2004, Mark Bray was invited to join a project which builds on his work and takes it to a different part of the world. The project is funded by the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation), and focuses on Eastern and Central Europe. Within this region is great diversity, which permits Shadow Education in Eastern and Central Europe Mark Bray and Git a Steiner-Khamsi in Tbilisi, Georgia 19 some fascinating comparisons. In addition, the region as a whole can be compared with East Asia and other parts of the world to show the impact of cultural, economic and political influences. In July 2004, Mark travelled to Tbilisi, Georgia, for a workshop on this project. Georgia, which borders on Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, is one of the republics of the former Soviet Union and has experienced major stresses in its education system. Teachers are very poorly paid, and have to undertake tutoring and other activities simply to survive. This situation is very different from that in Hong Kong, for example. The project is being undertaken by teams in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. During the workshop, participants from each country focused on draft questionnaires and discussed methodological issues. They are now proceeding to data collection, keeping in touch with each other and with Mark Bray through the Internet. “This is a really exciting project” Mark commented. “It takes the concepts set out in the 1999 book as the starting point, and moves them to a completely different part of the world.” The project, he added, “has great potential to make both conceptual and practical inputs”. An added pleasure for Mark during the Tbilisi workshop was to collaborate with Gita Steiner-Khamsi, who is one of CERC’s small number of Associate Members. Gita is based in Teachers College, Columbia (New York), and is also an adviser to the Open Society Institute on its education projects. Higher Education Reform in Vietnam invited “international experts” were also requested to consult as a group with these senior members of government in the evening after the first day of the conference. A key question with which Vietnam is grappling is how to open up the space in which its universities operate following years of highly centralised and autocratic decision-making in the tertiary domain. Mark Mason was interviewed by Vietnam’s national television and radio about how Hong Kong protects, or at least endeavours to protect, the academic and political independence of its universities. It was, in sum, a valuable opportunity to raise the profile of HKU, the Faculty, and CERC.
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