T C A SRINIVASA-RAGHAVAN: How to reduce absenteeism

OKONOMOS

The problem is not merely of the right incentives but of competing incentives

Last week, Parth Shah of the Centre for Civil Society, organised a workshop for college students. One of the topics was primary education.

So inevitably the question of absenteeism, especially in rural areas, came up because it has assumed truly alarming dimensions now. One of the speakers, in a fit of honesty, said that a major part of the problem was the attitude of the teachers, many of whom were drawn from castes that previously had little to do with education.

The teaching job for them was just an add-on. Their main concern was their farm or their shop which had to be tended, or their cows which had to be herded or whatever.

He may or may not be right about the factors that influence the attitude of the school teachers in rural areas. But one thing is for sure: attitude is important.

In a recent paper* on absenteeism in schools and primary health centres in rural India Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT (USA) have tried to see how attitudes can be changed. Banerjee and Duflo are professors of economics and directors of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT.

Their key conclusion: "fighting absence will either require incentives implemented from outside the system or a large enough boost to demand that the beneficiaries are willing to assume some degree of control."

They also say that often the problem is not that the incentives don't exist; it is that they don't get implemented effectively because no one seems interested enough.

This may be right. As another speaker at the workshop asked, when was the last time a political party had viewed primary education as a vote-winning election promise? Free power fetches more electoral dividends.

Banerjee and Duflo have relied on an experiment conducted by Seva Mandir, an NGO based in Udaipur. "In 60 randomly selected schools (the "treatment schools"), the organization gave the teacher a camera, with instructions to take a picture of himself or herself and the students every day at opening time and at closing time."

A "valid" day was one in which the opening and closing shot had at least 5 hours between them. The incentive was that "a teacher received a salary of Rs 1,000 monthly if they were present at least 21 days in a month. Each additional valid day carried a bonus of Rs 50 up to a maximum of Rs 1,300 per month." There was also a penalty for each missed day of Rs 50.

The experiment, say the authors, "resulted in an immediate improvement in teacher attendance, which persisted during the entire year. The absence rate of teachers was cut by half in the treatment schools, dropping from an average of 36 per cent in the comparison schools to 18 per cent in the treatment schools."

So the policy conclusion is, get your incentives right and implement them effectively. If either side of it is faulty "" the incentives structure or its implementation "" the problem will remain unsolved.

In a blinkered sort of way, Banerjee and Duflo are probably right. But if they really want to help, they need to study the problem of competing incentives (and dis-incentives) as well.

One set relates to the constitutional provision in Article 311 which guarantees, in effect, that no employee of the State can ever be dismissed, regardless of he or she does or does not do.

Another relates to the other duties that the State requires teachers and health workers to perform, such as election work, census (even of buffaloes) and so on. By itself, each may not take up much time, but cumulatively they do. These examples can be multiplied.

In fairness, the authors do say that the job description must be clearer. But they fail to note the trade-off between a fuzzy job description and a cast-iron guarantee of lifelong employment, plus benefits.

*Addressing Absence, BREAD Policy Paper No. 008, May 2005