It's the quality, dear!

I am reading articles written by The Ken https://the-ken.com/ or Medium talking about the distress in private schools. They talk about parents not paying fee to schools. Schools, therefore not being able to pay teachers. And end up asking for some kind of relief from the government. In a subtle way, they also cast a shadow on the 'intent' of parents to pay. This is a classic case of confusing symptoms with the disease, leading to a wrong diagnosis and therefore incorrect remedy. To be clear, I'm focusing on affordable private schools - those that charge fee between 12K to 40K p.a. and target middle income and lower middle income parents - since this is where LEAD School mostly works in.

Let us get one thing right first. What does a school stand for? Pre-Covid, schools stood for reputation, building, facilities, transport, classroom infrastructure, peer group, books, materials, teacher quality and of course, learning quality. This is what parents used to pay for. In the lock-down world, all of the above except the last two have been taken out of the equation. That brings the focus right on to teacher quality and learning quality. And this is the gist of the problem.

Most schools have not done much during the last two months of lockdown. They have been postponing action from one fortnight to the next, waiting for government to provide clarity, watching what other schools are doing and consoling themselves that this is anyways summer vacation time, where no real learning can happen. Some of them are even under righteous indignation that since some parents are yet to pay last quarterly fee, school is not beholden to do anything. This is suicidal. Parents will pay for learning. They will pay if we engage their child meaningfully. But if school is not doing anything, there is no reason for a parent to pay. The argument that schools have to pay their teachers and hence parents should pay, runs thin for them because they will pay for a service, not to preserve school's operating structure.

Some schools are doing some kind of jugaad by sending links, pdfs, assignments to students and they expect parents to help out or students to figure out. This gives schools the false comfort that they are doing something but if we see usage figures, only the most self-driven student is able to do this. Most students ignore these links and parents struggle to drive adherence. When parents don't see usage, they have no incentive to pay. They will wait till schools open because then they can start paying for the other paraphernalia.

Then, there are schools that have rallied their teachers to start taking live classes using free available software like Zoom, Hangout, Meet, Whatsapp Video. "It is free to conduct a class, I'm already paying my teachers, so might as well use them to teach" is a common argument. This, in my view, is a slippery slope. Let us see why: In the Pre-Covid era, parents would drop their child at the school gate and had no idea of what transpired in the four walls of the classroom. Any complaint by students of being bored or not understanding was responded with a dismissive, "You should pay attention". But now, the classroom has come home. Parents are sitting besides their children and seeing firsthand, with increasing dismay, the quality of teaching being dished out. They wonder why they should be paying for such quality. They would rather look at other options or wait till the schools re-open.

The poor quality of online learning is not surprising because we have never trained our teachers to teach online. Taking Live classes is a nightmare for most teachers because managing behaviour in a teacher-centric class, while easier in a physical setting where you can catch and scold, is immensely difficult in an online class where students have the safety of distance. And most teachers and schools don't have the wherewithal to do asynchronous classes because these require training and infrastructure. Only the few thousand top-end schools in India have been able to master this and they are able to collect fee (also because the supply-demand skews in their favour, so parents willy-nilly have to pay to preserve their seat)

So here we are: With physical infrastructure and daycare being out of the equation, the only way schools can command fee is by providing quality online learning. And most are failing at this touchstone. It is not that parents don't have the intention to pay. It is that we are yet to provide them a strong incentive to pay. Of course, different state governments have muddied the waters by issuing various fee diktats but parents know better. If they get quality, they will pay because they care for their child's learning and growth - at No. 3 after food and health.

Why do I say this? Our trust runs affordable private schools in Maharashtra. And our parents have been paying fee. We work with 800+ affordable partner schools from around India. And while fee collection was a challenge during the lockdown because parents couldn't come to school, now with lockdown opening up (although schools are still shut), parents are coming to the school and paying fee. All this because, for the last 2 months, parents have seen their children learn through LEAD School@Home, a high quality online school that students have been attending from their home. Here are some stats to drive the point:

1. In just 2 months, LEAD School@Home has got 10 million class views. Yes, 10 million!
2. Total app installs to access LEAD School@Home are 220K with over 300K students accessing classes (phones are shared devices in a lot of homes).
3. Parent satisfaction has been high at 75%.
4. Student learning is solid at 65% mastery. This is 10% lower than physical classroom learning and we are working on ways to bump it up. But it is significantly better than pre-LEAD which was 53% and non-LEAD which, given the solutions being delivered, would be close to zero.

So, if you want to retain your parents, collect fee and drive more admissions, don't complain or look for government support. Simply, improve the quality of your online learning and see the tide turn. We can help and we are a shout away at 86828 33333 or [email protected]

ps: The situation will be different among parents who did not have savings to fall back upon and where food and health concerns are also not being met. These parents mostly send their children to government schools or budget private schools (<10K fee p.a.). I am not in a position to comment on the situation here. If anyone understands the dynamics for these parents, please add or link a separate piece.