Project Summary
Background. Education is of uncontested importance of whatever reforms take place in Georgia. It is rather a process of medium- to long-term investment into human capital, than system consuming taxpayer money. If organised correctly, for sufficient duration, this investment eventually pays of, ensuring sustainability of systemic transformation.
The post-Soviet transformation process is normally associated with virtual collapse of systems involved, with consecutive feeble attempts to restore them. Education is one the rare exceptions in Georgia that have not followed this example and continued to perform its functions in a very difficult environment.
The main problem the school education is the ever-widening gap between the formally recognised and actually pursued goals of development. Formally the Constitution of Georgia guaranties free basic education (first 9 years of 12 years of complete secondary education). Although the physical volume of this system has not reduced significantly since the last years of the USSR, the amount of the current financing is at least 10-12 times less. The more important is, that society as a whole and the state in particular, are expecting (and requesting) education to comply with standards at least as high as the former Soviet one disregarding whatever actual support may be actually forwarded.
Situation when school education manages to survive and formally function under the given circumstances is just a stalemate, which cannot last for long. Individual institutions are largely left to their own resources and their success depends on entrepreneurial and managerial abilities of their principals, rather than on positive synergy of systemic factors in action. Interests of education per se are disregarded more often than not. Schools pursue mainly their own survival interests sacrificing long-term interests of societal development for short-term survival considerations.
There is very little concern about the quality of education. Education officials are mainly engaged in maintaining some semblance of orderly school process, especially in winter when classes fail more often than not simply due to absence of heating and electricity. Parents who are looking for the “normal” education for their children are entrusting them to private tutors outside formal educational system, but this practice thrives for at least 3 last decades.
Georgian school system has been deeply corrupted since 1960-s. Although this “traditional” trade of marks for money (or for in kind payment or services rendered by parents) still continues where it is possible, today it is not the cause of principal concern. [1] The post-Soviet transformations might have even reduced this kind of corruption to some extent by sharply reducing its material and financial basis. The vast majority of parents (especially in rural areas) are simply unable or do not care to pay for the better education (or rather the better certificates) for their children even if pressure from impoverished teachers is as heavy as it has ever been.
My personal experience of analysing the school education in Georgia in recent years shows that the inept government activities (represented by the Ministry of Education) are promoting and formalising the corruption and inequality more efficiently than individual action by school principals and teachers can do.
No school in Georgia is able to survive and function without additional financial, service or in kind contribution by parents, the state providing almost nothing beyond the meagre teachers’ salaries. Education decision makers acknowledge this on practice, if not formally. As result for number of years they are engaged in development of schemes that may help organise financial “support” to schools by parents without too openly violating the constitution.
There is virtually endless process of formalising some kind of payments for “school maintenance” and condemning them the very next day and formalising again… The truth is that almost all schools request such “contributions” but response varies widely depending on financial abilities and attitudes of parents. At least in Tbilisi – the capital of Georgia, these may vary from app. $ 1 to $ 50 per month depending on school.
This also leads to gross violation of the most basic human rights and discrimination of the less affluent students in schools establishing the high monthly payments. They are openly “pressed out” of such schools or are not admitted into them into first place, although formally again this problem does not exist and victims of such practices cannot hope to find any understanding and support. [2] Popular participation in decision-making as regards school management and corruption and inequality control is all but non-existent.
Since the existing ministerial control over collection and utilisation of collected funds is too weak the division line between the “necessary” endowments and corrupt money is rather blurred, to say the least of it. Even more – it is almost impossible to establish efficient formal control over them, since it is tantamount to institutionalising that contrary to the constitution the Georgian school education is paid and unequal in addition to being corrupt.
Objectives and methodology, timetable and dissemination. My working hypothesis is that situation such as it exists today is highly dangerous, to say the least of it. Attempts to pretend that school education is free and equal while in reality it is paid and discriminative may efficiently lead to total collapse of this system even in the short to medium run. The corruption may simply eat it from inside.
There are also mistakes in defining the economic, social and political implications of existing mismatch between abilities of a weak economy to support a large-scale free basic education, whatever the impoverished educational system may realistically provide and formal requests formulated as regards the performance of the same education.
The alternative is explicit formulation of priorities backed by feasibility assessments and multi-scenario planning. At this stage of project development I may empirically suggest that given all existing constraints the most efficient way to fight corruption in the Georgian school system is to reduce its basis by downgrading the formal state educational obligations to realistically supportable by the local economy. Actually this may mean reduction of amount of free schooling to 4-6 first years of general education. [3]
Thus the main goals of the project are:
· to analyse the world experience of fighting corruption in a school education and investigate a possibility of adaptation of successful policies to a current Georgian context;
· to analyse the prospects of ongoing restructuring of the school education from standpoints of existing corruption, emerging inequality and diminishing quality;
· to formulate the priorities of restructuring the local school education from above mentioned standpoints;
· to access the consecutive influence of ongoing structural transformations in Georgia on education as a whole and on corruption, inequality and quality of education in particular;
· to develop alternative scenarios of transformation of school education, based on various models of development bearing in mind priorities of fighting corruption in the system;
· to access social, economic and political consequences of possible reduction of school education commitments the state versus retaining the existing, unrealistic one that it can not support;
· to develop efficient mechanisms enabling a popular participation in decision-making process as regards priorities mentioned above.
· To make a cross reference of problems of corruption in school education with analogous problems of two others countries of Transcaucasian region and make decision on applicability of recommendations developed for Georgia for Armenia and Azerbaijan as well (this goal may be considered as optional).
To reach the above-mentioned goals I intend to analyse formally existing information on school education on Georgia as well as to conduct independent research as regards the actual financing of school education, corruption, inequality and quality of education. That means conducting intensive consultations with local education experts and officials, as well as local economists and decision makers, organising focus groups consisting of these people in addition to school students, parents, teachers, school principals, representatives education NGOs. It also includes in depth studies of two local secondary schools the “elite” one and one surviving with very little or no parents’ contribution.
As a result of these activities the preliminary recommendations and alternative scenarios of development of school education will be developed and tested during workshops (1-2) organised with participation of people mentioned above.
This will comprise a first stage of the project with duration estimated up to 12-16 months depending mainly on willingness of targeted auditorium to cooperate. It will take place in Georgia.
On the second stage of the project conclusions reached on the first stage will be analysed against a background of the world experience and the final scenarios and recommendations will be developed. This stage of the project should be based at the Institute of Educational Policy in Budapest and last for 4-6 months.
The major results of a proposed project are going to be summed up in a research paper, accessible to a general public, thus contributing to a growth of a public awareness of pressing problems of school corruption, inequality and diminishing quality of a general public education. The more specific results will be summarised in a form of scenarios of possible development and policy recommendations that will be provided to appropriate structures of the Georgian Parliament, Government, Ministries of Education, Finances and Economy, thus contributing to a decision making on the problems of development of school education in Georgia.
[1] Although they formally look very much alike there is the basic difference between the Soviet and the post-Soviet corruption. If before money was extorted from generally affluent population as additional support for teachers who might or might not provide some additional services in return, today this money often is the major source of physical survival of both teachers and schools alike, provided often by the equally impoverished parents.
[2] These have already led to the final “crystallisation” of the system of elite schools, which are accessible only to children of the leading local citizens. Frankly speaking such schools existed in Georgia for at least 5 decades but only recently they became able to openly discriminate their students on the basis of social or/and financial standing of their parents. Besides high payments do not necessarily guarantee better education, but rather the better school environment – constant electricity supply, heating in winter, high quality lunch, clean toilettes, better school equipment, etc.
[3] Of course this should automatically lead to abolishment of free higher education as well. The free higher education as it exists today has a major impact on corruption in schools, but unfortunately project requirements does not allow to address this subject as well.