Face
Value - Chalk, Talk and Customer Service
1st May, 2004 - An Article by The Economist
Few people praise the state monopoly in education
these days, in Britain, America or anywhere else.
The main political parties in Britain support choice
for parents, and some blurring of the line between
state and independant education. Parents have rather
more radical desires: a recent poll in Britain showed
that 53% would opt out of the state sector if they
could afford to, compared with just 7% who go private
now. Alas for them, the existing private schools are
horribly complacent. Rather than expand into the beckoning
low-cost market, they sit in their existing niche,
offering expensive education to the lucky few.
This is where Sunny Varkey, a fabulously wealthy
Dubai-based entrepreneur, sees an opportunity. His
firm, Global Education Management Systems (GEMS),
already runs a bunch of schools in the United Arab
Emirates, which educate more than 40,000 children.
Within 5 years, he wants GEMS to be running 200 schools
in Britain plus a few elsewhere, including in Washington
DC, where he has recently acquired a 30-acre site.
Fees at his British schools will start at just £6,000
($10,700) a year - only a few hundred pounds more,
incidentally, then the taxpayer currently forks out,
on average, for a pupil in the state system. This
is 25% less then the existing average cost for private
education, yet he expects his schools to be not only
less expensive, but better: more focused, more efficient
and with superior customer care.
There is room for better results on all those fronts.
Most independant schools in Britain (and elsewhere)
are poorly managed. They are (nominally) charities,
run by a board of governors, often appointed for their
personal connections rather than managerial savvy.
The headmasters they appoint are often excellent teachers
but only rarely good managers of what are, in fact,
medium-sized business. Reporting lines are blurred.
Costs inflate, productivity slides. The mix of goals
that the school is trying to achieve - including the
charitable purpose, educational quality, size, reputation,
or efficiency - is muddled.
