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The “Wickedness” — At Srinidhi School, education quality is poor, learning is relative, and teachers are textbooks that talk, if that. Is it worth paying someone to stand in front of each class to read a textbook verbatim to students? The typical class, computer, English, general knowledge or what have you, consists of teachers reciting from the textbook while children copy word for word into their notebook. After the dictation, which not to mention is recited from a government caliber textbook written in poor English and recited by teachers who do not speak English, students may complete a textbook class work exercise, or they may not. The final third of the class is spent with in-class grading of the dictation and assigned class work. The teacher gives a once over and a definitive red mark in each of the student’s notebooks. The bell rings and the next class begins, whether Kindergarten, 5th standard or 10th, most likely proceeding in much the same trajectory.

At Srinidhi, teacher quality is at the core of school problems and at the heart of school owner complaints. Despite repeated request of the school owner for teacher input and ideas, staff exhibit no initiative or critical thinking ability with respect to teaching, lesson planning or school role, and fail to deliver (for the record, there is no lesson planning, current school improvement initiatives, or special programs/extracurricular activities). According to the school owner, teachers should be using dictation and note taking for 1-2 lessons prior to an exam for review rather than as the primary means of “teaching”. Teachers should be using hands-on activities and more interactive approaches in their lessons and should be bringing to her their own ideas.

The majority of teachers arrive at Srinidhi with an undergraduate degree, a potential 10-month teacher program certification, and for high school teachers, a master’s degree in their respective subject. They hail from the immediate neighborhood of Bagalagunte and are mostly mothers with school-aged children and no previous teaching experience or skills training of any kind. While the school owner has lofty expectations of her staff (as compared to their current level of performance) she does not offer training upon hire or professional development throughout their career. Teachers are not only unclear of what the school owner expects of them, what she means by lesson planning and “hands-on” learning, but are ill-equipped to execute her demands at their current skill level. Teacher motivation is not the issue as teachers continuously express desire to improve their English and teaching ability, however the school owner has yet to explore options and meet this demand. Although the school is not financially transparent nor a sustainable operation, there is money available for training and school improvements on behalf of Srinidhi Education Society (family money), however execution has yet to be seen.

In addition to adequate training for teachers, human resources can also be exalted from the “wicked problem” list. The Srinidhi School administration is sufficiently understaffed with the school owner and 1 accountant/personal assistant attempting to manage 25 teachers, 535 students, and dozens of systemic problems. However, while understaffed on the administration side, Srinidhi is overstaffed on the teacher side as an unskilled assistant teacher resides in 4 of the school’s 13 classrooms. By eliminating assistant teachers alone, a skilled principal to assist the school owner could be hired, without spending a Rupee more than what is currently allocated in the imaginary “budget” for staff salaries.

Furthermore, hiring more qualified teachers as well as administrative personnel would be more within the school’s means if there was a stricter and more effective fee collection system ensuring more regular monthly payment by families. Last month’s Rs.50,000 deficit is proof that the school regularly pays out significantly more each month in salaries than it collects in school fees, which is only partially remediated at the end of the school year when families are prohibited from registering for the next school year without paying off the previous year’s tuition debt. Although fee collection is a bit trickier than say giving teachers the training and tools they need to be successful, a basic late payment penalty system or a slight increase in school fees are two examples of small steps towards increased revenue and subsequent purchasing power of more qualified human capital.

With human resources, financial constraints and lack of teacher training dismissed as root causes of the education quality problem, why then is student learning limited by poor lesson and teacher quality? Why do teachers continually fail to meet expectations of the school owner despite not being trained on what is expected and how to do it (did I mention that Srinidhi is an English medium school and that the teachers don’t speak English)? Why is there a misallocation of human capital with too many unskilled teachers doing too little, while there are no skilled administrators to help with any one of a dozen different problems the school owner finds herself faced with daily. How does the school owner simply shrug when relaying that nearly half of the parents have not paid school fees for the last three months? If we follow the problem of poor quality of education back to its root, we arrive at the “wicked problem”: the social entrepreneur herself, Srinidhi School owner.

Two Approaches — There are two ways of approaching the “wicked problem”, one of which is through the social entrepreneur_ a leader, innovator, problem solver, organizer, risk taker, jack-of-all trades sort with lofty goals of social and/or environmental gains while boasting a profit, in the very least, to remain financially afloat. It is often said that the greatest determinant of a business’s success is the entrepreneur himself that requires a specific mixture of industry expertise, criticality and ingenuity all executed simultaneously and with finesse. It requires management skills, leadership, creativity, delegation, mobilization and motivation, and a need to achieve, all executed with a personality of pioneering perseverance that thrives on risk. Even the most renowned social enterprises struggle with perpetual problems; a dual or triple bottom line is a tall order, even for the most esteemed entrepreneurs among us. For a less than ambitious change agent to enter the market and expect to succeed on the first try, without support, business know-how, and industry expertise would be nothing shy of a miracle. After four months of immersion in social enterprise and more specifically within the education sphere, it is clear that the social entrepreneur himself is the driving force in small business success. It takes a specific type of leader to produce an effective affordable private school. While each entrepreneur will use their own ingredients to create their own “stew”, the common thread in the success models will be leadership that is visionary, proactive, knowledge or research driven and ingenious; qualities that are absent in Srinidhi School’s “master chef”, school owner and social entrepreneur.

The second way of approaching the wicked problem is to take it a step further, beyond the social entrepreneur.  In India, it is common knowledge that the government has failed to deliver quality public education for its people. Whether this is a product of the population problem and the inability of the Indian government to, at present, accommodate the ever-exponential demand for education, or if it is a matter of eliminating resource and efficiency loss through rampant corruption, is a topic of debate.  Regardless, the Indian government has failed to deliver on education; a market failure and void that has been filled in part by the private sector with the proliferation of affordable private schools (APS). Because the current demand for quality education_ and perhaps more specifically, “English medium” schools_ exceeds the current supply, there is extremely easy, low barrier market entry into the low-income private education sector in India. Because barriers of entry are so low, there is a considerable range with respect to caliber of social entrepreneurs (also known as APS owners) that exist within the sector.

Rather than lay blame however on the intrepid APS owner who thinks they have what it takes to run a school, let us take the “wicked problem” back a step further. Why is the Indian legal and regulatory framework such that it is possible for anyone with a little start-up cash for a building to own their own school? Why has the Indian government failed on the education front and is corruption to blame? And what if anything does the “wicked problem”_from the policy perspective_ have to do with the population problem and the government’s ability (or inability) to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for public goods, such as education.

The Solution — This past weekend all IDEX Fellows convened in Hyderabad to pitch their “wicked problem” and proposed solution. We now have four months to work collaboratively in small groups to develop solutions to these challenges, which range in nature from human resources, infrastructure and difficulty in transitioning from a non-profit to a social enterprise, to a “lack of empathy” and “fear of failure”. In addressing the wicked problem of the intrepid social entrepreneur (who may or may not be either of the two), I’ve paired up with two other school fellows and one working at UnLtd India, an incubator for social entrepreneurs, who have identified a void of community-based [what they are calling “Type C”] entrepreneurs in their portfolio.  When it comes down to it, affordable private school owners are our “Type C” entrepreneur.  However, APS owners aren’t the only ones that fit the bill.  Our research question_ what we will prepare for investors and run test pilots on between now and April: How can we use affordable private school “space” in off school hours as incubators for developing Type C community-based social entrepreneurs?

Question of the Week — In light of a presumed “information gap”, how do you get a sensitive target population to answer survey questions the way you would like them to answer (think they should be answering) but without you giving away the answers?  ie. How do you get a population excited and engaged about social entrepreneurship when the word “social entrepreneur” itself lies outside of their myopic lens?