Education in India

Thoughts on improving the education system

My friend Badri has written up his thoughts on the problems with our current education system in his blog Thoughts in Tamil. His post is in Tamil. For all those others who can't read Tamil, here's an English translation of his post. Badri has incidentally made a conscious choice to blog in Tamil rather than in English.

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The Indian Education system is in great trouble. These are some of the faults I find in the current education system.

• Several children do not even get a basic elementary education.

• The rich and upper middle class in cities find decent quality private schools to send their children to. Even in these schools, getting a pass in the exams is the priority, not learning. Even these schools fail in teaching various arts, and in particular common sense to children.

• Both the private and government schools in smaller towns and villages are uniformly pathetic.

• Even if a student graduates from a higher secondary school, there are not enough colleges. The only hope left to most high school graduates is correspondence education. It is not clear to me whether one can be motivated enough to study through the correspondence course material sitting at home.

• Even if one graduates from college, the graduates are mostly unemployable, because of poor quality course material and teaching in the colleges. I have myself seen a number of such people while interviewing them for various posts in my organization.

Despite all this, several thousand young men and women have been leading our nation forward. On just about all counts of economic indicators including the foreign exchange reserves, "India is Shining". Just imagine where we can be if only we resolved our education related problems?

Here are some of my (not so complete) ideas:

1. Compulsory free education should be made available till Class XII

   The state and central governments should completely absorb the cost of providing free education till 12th standard to every child, irrespective of caste, religion and economic status. This should cover not just school fees, but also free books, food if necessary, uniform clothing and even a place to stay if the parents cannot afford that to their children. Those with money can always opt for their favourite private school, and feed their own children. Alternately, some rich may decide to send their children to the govt. schools.

2. Govt. schools should be run by private entities/entrepreneurs.

   It is very doubtful if the government can manage hiring qualified teachers and provide quality education to children. Like in the USA, the government can opt for building the schools and make them available to private companies on a long-term lease, based on auction. The organization that comes up with the lowest bid and agrees to maintain the best quality education would be chosen to run each school in each locality.

   We need to introduce a concept of 'education credit'. It is an amount equal to the average cost incurred in teaching a child in the privately run Govt. schools. This education credit is made available to every child. The child can either avail of the education by exchanging this credit in the Govt. owned and private operated school, or cash this portion against the fees and other costs incurred by them in a completely private school. This way, the tax payer does not have to feel miffed that his her money is used only to train OTHER children. Panchayat and municipalities must own and manage the school premises and oversee the operation of the private entities running the school.

3. All education above higher secondary school level should be primarily dealt with by private entities.

   If some state governments wish, they can run colleges, but it should be unnecessary. Students should be offered lenient education loans at very low interest rates.These loans are liable to be paid only after the students finish their education and find a job of their own.

   That is, free education until higher secondary; but paid-for education after that. Those who can't afford to pay for this higher education get low-cost and lenient loans. This kind of comfortable educational loans are made available to students in USA.

4. Alternate education must be promoted

   It appears to me that there is no need to teach anyone for more than 3 hours a day till the secondary school. Therefore, the available education infrastructure can be used more effectively through the shift system. Three normal shifts can be run between 0700-1000, 1100-1400 and 1500-1800 hours. An hour gap in between for the children to leave the school and the next set to walk in. In the late nights - from 1900-2200, the facility can be used to provide education to old and unlettered. Facilities such as the building, furniture, library, computer centre, laboratories and play fields can be used very efficiently in this
   manner.

   Further, individual teachers wanting to run their own curriculum can be entertained to use the nearby school facilities including the building, furniture, library, computer centre and laboratories. Like the 'Gurukula' method, a single teacher can lead a group of about 20 children from 1st to 12th standard. The students can write their 10th and 12th standard examination under the National Institute of Open Schooling. Nothing stops those who graduate through this system from joining the available colleges. Through the 'education credit', each student can pay his teacher. This helps the teacher earn a reasonable income and the student is also guaranteed quality infrastructure.

5. College education through correspondence system to be increased

   In each town, "Tutorial" colleges (as they are called in Chennai) can be set up by individuals who enroll their students in a correspondence course run by authorised universities. [This is applicable only to non-professional courses.] The day-to-day training is provided by these Tutorial colleges. The timings can be flexible, allowing for the students to also find a part-time work during the day.

6. Impediments in the way of setting up for-profit private colleges to be removed

   Today, only a charitable trust can set up educational institutions. Therefore, honest entrepreneurs interested in making profits will not get involved in spending their time and setting up quality educational institutions. The result is that only criminals who plunder money illegally in the name of "charitable trusts" get involved in providing education, and make money through capitation fees. To stop this, the government should allow for for-profit companies to set up educational institutions.

   This move will result in considerable capital flowing into the education sector. These colleges so set up will still come under the purview of the education ministries around the country, and so the government can still regulate the fees charges for providing the education. This is akin to regulating the distribution of power in Mumbai and Delhi. The government regulator only decides the upper limit cost per unit of power. Similar regulation now exists in telecom. Therefore it is perfectly possible to bring about the same in education as well.

   I do not claim that these suggestions, if implemented, will remove all problems we have in our education sector. However I am hopeful that they can alleviate the problem considerably.

   
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A school voucher model for rural India

Gurcharan Das, writing in the Times of India says

The government presented the free and compulsory education for children bill in the winter session, and we are celebrating as though we had beaten Australia in cricket. We should hail it as a great blow against the curse and shame of child labour. But we are not, and for good reason — we have lost faith in the state’s ability to run schools.

We accepted capitalism and the liberal reforms in 1991 because we thought that as the state withdrew from running businesses, it would pay attention to education. Having abandoned the socialist ideal of the equality of result, we now hoped for greater equality of opportunity, as so many capitalist societies in the West and the Far East have achieved. But this did not happen. Government schools remain unreformed, the gap persists, and a sense of betrayal mocks us.

Gurcharan Das refers to an article titled Primary Education in Rural Areas published in the Economic & Political Weekly a few months ago which proposed a model that is cost-effective, self-sustaining and has reduced scope for corruption, designed mainly for rural India. The model suggests the following:

• State will provide 'free and compulsory educaiton' to all children subject to the limits of its economic capacity;
  
• Competition ensures better service at lower cost;
  
• Human beings per se are not avers to learning (education). IN other words, given the proper environment, every child yearns to learn;
  
• The prime objective of primary level education is to help the child acquire the ability to read and write;
  
• The state will build schoolrooms around a playground and lease them out to qualified teacher entrepreneurs to run primary schools from standard I to IV according to the curriculum designed and approved by the state;
  
• The state will continue to support primary education by giving education vouchers to all eligible children which can be used to pay fees in any school of their choice run by the teacher entrepreneurs;

Das makes a strong case for trying out the above model.

School vouchers were first mooted in Prime Minister Vajpayee’s Economic Advisory Council in 2000. They have been tried in many countries with varying degrees of success, as a World Bank report brings out. In India, primary schools are in such distress that we owe it to ourselves to test this idea in at least one district, perhaps in Rajasthan, which is home to the best innovations in education. Through the test we will gain conviction before expanding vouchers nationwide.

We should also be prepared for opposition from vested interests — teachers, bureaucrats, and politicians don’t want to become accountable. But if the test succeeds, it might revolutionise primary education just as the STD booth revolutionised telecommunication. Mind you, the STD meter also started out as a test in one district.

He mentions Rajasthan as a state which is home to the best innovations in education. I am not aware of the innovations that are being tried out there - if any one knows, I'd be very interested in hearing of them.

Integrating creation of local information resources into the school curriculum

In an earlier post, I had suggested that we could use school/college students to create local information resources and explained how this activity could be integrated into the curriculum.

I've tried to come up with a list of things that the students can do to create local information resources with suggestions on how they can be integrated into the regular learning activities.

• Geography: Create a detailed map of the school and its neighbourhood. Usually geography is taught from a top-down perspective starting with the universe, solar system, planet, continents etc. I think it would help to start from bottom-up by getting students to learn about mapping areas that they know and visit daily and then expanding outwards.

• Envirnomental studies: Collect data on a daily basis on maximum and minimum temperature, rainfall, humidity, pollution levels and also other parameteres like soil profile, quality of groundwater etc.

• History: Compile a personal history for each student and create a genealogical database consisting of the family trees of all students (software programs are available to create the genealogical database). Each student will be helped to trace his/her family tree as far back and possible and link the persons in the different branches of the tree with the major events of their times, tracer their migrations and so on. This exercise in personal history will help prepare the context and provide the motivation for students to study the history of the neighbourhood, city, state and country.

  Create a history of the local neighbourhood, going back in time year by year, and documenting important events that happened, people who lived or visited there etc. Usually History is taught by starting from the beginning and chronologically moving forward. I think it would help to start from now (a time that students can easily identify with) and move chronologically backward in time.

• Biology and Ecology: Compile a list of all flora and fauna present in the neighbourhood with photographs, descriptions, observations of their behaviour etc. - in effect, create an ecological resource for the neighbourhood.

• Health and Health Care: Compile a list of diseases and health problems prevalent in the neighbourhood, their causes, symptoms and treatement and a list of health care services offered in the neighbourhood.

• Civics: Create a database of information relating to local government - their sources of revenue(taxes, levies etc.), the expenditure (what is the money spent on), the elections to the local bodies and list of all representatives etc.

  Compile a list of all services offered by government bodies in the locality - Registrar, District Collector, Regional Transport Office, Local municipal body, Local courts, Government departments that have special schemes etc.

  Compile a list of all utilities and services available in the neighbourhood like electricity, water supply, telephone, sewage/drainage, garbage removal with information on how these utilities and services work in the neighbourhood - e.g. what happens to the garbage? where is the electricity coming from, what happens to the sewage etc.

• Population Studies: Conduct a mini-census of all students in the school and their families and publish a school census document. The census will aim to cover all parameters captured in the national census. Apart from this, the census can also cover issues specific to the school students (like height, weight, birth dates etc.). This collection of data will be a good starting point for the students to learn about statistical analysis and a learning ground before taking on the larger task of conducting an annual neighbourhood census.

  This could lead to the creation of a comprehensive Geographic Information System (GIS) for the neighbourhood (appropriate GIS software can be bought or developed for this).

• Economy and Business: Create an online directory of local businesses, shops and establishments in the neighbourhood along with details of services offered by them. Produce periodic reports on the local economy by tracking the prices (as well as consumption) of essential commodities and products and services available in the neighbourhood.

  Document the supply chains from the manufacturers/producers to the retail outlets (including the public distribution system) in the neighbourhood for groceries (milk, vegetables, fruits, oil, rice, wheat and and other foodstuffs), cosmetics, clothing, newspapers/magazines etc.

  Create and operate a local classifieds web site for rentals, jobs and other local services, a la Craigslist

• Media: Publish a daily neighbourhood blog online or even a weekly/monthly newspaper covering happenings in the neighbourhood including advertisements from local businesses/traders to meet costs.

• Culture: Document the cultural traditions of the neighbourhood and compile a list of arts, crafts and literature relating to the local neighbourhood prevalent.

• Essential services and other social issues: Create a database of the housing stock available in the neighbourhood, literacy levels, educational facilities, local transport facilities etc.

• Surveys and polls: Conduct market research surveys and opinion polls. Students could undertaked surveys and polls commissioned by neighbourhood traders, businesses, NGOs and media (newspapers, television) as well.

School chains in India

I've been thinking about the business of schooling and the challenge of coming up with an affordable, high quality (effective) sustainable (operationally profitable) and replicable model for schools to address the growing educational needs of India.

That got me thinking on the various private school chains already in existence across India. Here is a list of school chains (listed in no particular order) which have created replicable models that have enabled them to keep growing by setting up more schools.

• Brand: Delhi Public School
  Managed by: Delhi Public School Society See an earlier post for more information about them. Their first school was started at Mathura Road in Delhi in 1949.

• Brand: Krishnamurti Schools
  Managed by: Krishnamurti Foundation India
  They have 6 schools across the country. The first was set up at Rishi Valley in the early 1930s.

• Brand: Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan
  Managed by: Bala Bhavan Educational Trust
  They have 2 schools in Chennai and another to be set up in Bangalore in association with the Brigade Group. The first school was set up in Chennai in 1958.

• Brand: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Schools
  Managed by: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
  They run around 30 schools across the country, many in association with various third parties. They also run an Indian Central School in Singapore.

• Brand: Vidya Bharati Schools
  Managed by: Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan
  According to their web site, they are running 18,749 schools across India with 97 of them being residential. Vidya Bharati was formed in 1977. The only chain that runs thousands of schools - quite an achievement worthy of further study.

• Brand: Ramakrishna Mission Schools
  Managed by: Ramakrishna Mission
  I have not been able to find any information on the number of schools they run across the country. Their Chennai Chapter has some details of the schools they run and the various other chapters across the country and the world.

• Brand: Chinmaya Vidyalayas
  Managed by: Chinmaya Education Movement
  According to their web site, they are running 75 Chinmaya Vidyalayas across India and one International residential school.

• Brand: DAV Schools
  Managed by: The Arya Samaj
  I'm not sure if it is one national organisation that manages all the schools though. They are supposedly running around 700 schools across India, but I haven't been able to find any formal mention of this anywhere.

• Brand: Montfort Schools
  Managed by: Society of Montfort Brothers of St. Gabriel
  The Society of Montfort Brothers of St. Gabriel is involved in the area of education in thirty two countries across the world. In India, they run educational institutions across, South, East, North, North East and Central India along with a residential school in Yercaud.
  Thanks to Sathish for the pointer.

• Brand: VHP Schools
  Managed by: Vishwa Hindu Parishad
  The VHP runs more than 130 schools across India.
  Thanks to Sathish for the pointer.

• Brand: NDMVP Schools
  Managed by: Nashik District Maratha Vidhya Prasarak Samaj
  The Nashik District Maratha Vidhya Prasarak Samaj runs over 180 schools and colleges in Maharashtra.
  Thanks to Suhit Anantula for the pointer.

• Brand: Maharishi Vidya Mandir Schools
  Managed by: Maharishi Trust
  According to their web site, they are running over 225 schools across India.

In addition there are the chains operated and subsidised by the Central government like the

• Kendriya Vidyalayas, run by the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sanghatan which was established in 1965 to run schools for the children of transferable government employees.
  
• Sainik Schools, established as a joint venture of the Central and State Governments in 1961 and, governed by the Sainik Schools Society under the Ministry of Defence.
  
• Navodaya Vidyalayas, run by the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, New Delhi, for talented rural children

.

I've also not included schools run by the Aditya Birla Group (which runs 30 schools across India) or the Tatas and other such corporates since most of these schools are run largely for children of their employees and are probably subsidised as well.

I don't know if the various schools run by the Jesuits and other christian missions are parts of chains as I'm not sure if it is one single organisation that is behind a large number of them. So I've left them out of this. If anyone can throw some light on this, please do. There a sizeable number of schools run by these organisations.

This is a very cursory list and I'm sure there are many more school chains that I don't know of. If you know of any brands in various regions across India, please do let me know.

India considering open IIMs abroad - who will fund them?

According to a report in The Hindu, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) might be opened abroad soon. The report quotes R. Natarajan, Chairman of the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), as saying that that Mauritius and Singapore had evinced interest in setting up IIMs.

Natarajan, who is a member of a subcommittee constituted to study the issue by the Review Committee of the IIMs, said India was in favour of opening IIMs in developing countries. He said the subcommittee had submitted its interim report and would submit its final report by January 2004.

Trade in education is a big business and it is time India began to export education. The IITs and the IIMs are our best educational brands and we should be looking to leverage them to expand abroad.

But who is going to fund the foray of IIMs to other countries? HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi is trying to cut down the amount of funding to IIMs in India to help generate funds for his pet Sarva Shiksha Abhayan project. How will he then justify funding for IIMs to be set up abroad to cater to students of those countries? Shouldn't the IIMs be encouraged to raise funding themselves through alumni and corporates and leave the government out of it altogether?

There is apparently already a similar proposal under active consideration by the Government of India to set up IITs abroad, which again is best left to the IITs rather than the government stepping in.

JNU Prof is now Head Master of Doon School

Kanti Bajpai, fomer JNU professor and prominent TV expert on foreign affairs has now been the Head Master of Doon School since June 2003. He is a former student of Doon School and has also taught in the school for an year early on in his career. It is quite unusual for a university professor to turn school teacher and educational leader as well - quite heartening to note. A previous post had talked about the scarcity of educational leaders and this could be the beginning of a trend for professionals from outside of the school education system to come in to provide leadership. More people need to turn their attention to the challenges in school education.

In an interview before joining Doon School, Kanti Bajpai described his background and explained his reasons for the switch.

Why did you apply for the position of headmaster?

I applied for the headmastership because I love the School, because I believe in its role as a liberal educational institution, because I think that secondary education is as important as tertiary (if not more) and want to play a role in education at that level, because after 13 years in university education this seems more challenging to me, and because, to be frank, I wanted my family to see and experience something other than metropolitan life in Delhi.

What part of the job of being headmaster interests you the most?

Every part of being HM interests me! I don’t think it can be any other way. But if I had to pick particular areas of interest, I would say that they are: broadening the curriculum, modernizing the classroom, and raising academic standards even further. I won’t say too much more at present because these are quite serious matters and must be discussed thoroughly with the Board, with my colleagues on the teaching staff, and others.

I am very interested in the community life of the School as well—the relationship between the boys, teachers, non-teaching staff, and the HM, as well as the families who are also part of the Chandbagh community. It has always been a well-knit, informal community—are there things to be done here, nonetheless? The School’s relationship to Dehra Dun is vital. Should we not know more about the town, its history, society, and cultures?

Does anything in your career prepare you particularly well to be headmaster?

First, my international experience—I have studied, taught, or conducted research in India, England, Canada, the US, and, most lately, albeit very briefly, Australia. Incidentally, working not just in academia but also in policy institutes/think tanks has been an asset (the Centre for Policy Research, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, and Brookings). You have to shed your nice white professorial coat and place your feet firmly in the real world now and then! In these globalizing times, this mix of experiences is an advantage I bring to the job.

Second, I have had a fairly varied teaching career within India. I have taught not just in Dehra Dun, but also in Baroda and Delhi. I have therefore lived and worked in three different parts of India. Over the years, I have traveled quite extensively within India as an academic, attending conferences and giving lectures. I think that this more national experience is important for Doon, which must attract students and teachers from all over the country.

Third, there are two aspects of my JNU career that I should mention here: one, I have twice served as Chairperson of my Centre; and, two, I have been a Warden of a men’s hostel for the past 9 years. Working with colleagues and students, often in very challenging circumstances, in a university renowned for its political activism and consciousness, have taught me things that should serve me well as HM. I understand that a big part of leading is taking others along.

Last, and by no means least, I have taught as a professional teacher in the classroom for thirteen years. I am no stranger to young people and the enterprise of learning. While school-going youngsters and the learning challenges are different at the secondary level, I have had a lot of classroom experience that should hold me in good stead. Above all, what I have learned from those 13 years is that I like young people and (I think) get on well with them.

More on the "Free and Compulsory Education Bill"

Business Standard reports

With literacy rates at just 65 per cent, those for the poor and socially disadvantaged groups 15-20 percentage points lower, and with dropout rates in schools a depressing 67 per cent (in 1998-99 for Classes I-X), it is obvious that India’s education system has a serious problem.

Earlier this year, a Punjab MLA found that while the state government spends an average of Rs 682 per student per month from middle school onwards, private schools spend between Rs 400 and Rs 500, and their pass percentages are 30-40 per cent better.

Is the Rs. 400-500 figure for private schools the total expenditure of the school per child per month or is this the fees that is paid by each child per month? Need to find out the data source and the veracity of these numbers.

Another study, of the latest NSS data, shows expenditure on education by the poorer sections (the bottom 40 per cent of the population) has grown 12.4 times between 1983 and 1999. In other words, with the government’s education programme not working, even the poor are looking for alternatives.

But the government’s proposed education bill, which plans to make it mandatory that a fifth of the students in private schools must be poor, is no solution. While several school principals in Delhi have endorsed the idea and given examples of how their schools run special classes for the poor, the proposal is not workable on a large scale without distortions. Besides, there is the certainty that, as in the case of other quotas-driven markets, there will develop a healthy black market in getting richer students admitted in the quota for the poor!

The completely disparate backgrounds of children in a common milieu could make life difficult for all concerned if such a model is made mandatory. The Delhi government is trying out a more sensible experiment, of ‘twinning’, where children from government and private schools spend time in each other’s schools.

Which is why a less radical and more workable alternative to the Mandal-type proposal is one that involves improving education standards within the environment in which children from poorer families already study, that is in the government schools.

Tracking the progress of each of its 998 schools on an Intranet, rewarding/punishing schools whose results improve/deteriorate by a certain amount, filling teacher vacancies, and involving NGOs and Resident Welfare Associations in a Bhagidari programme, for instance, has helped the Delhi government-run schools increase their pass percentage for Class X from 39 per cent in 1997-98 to 62 per cent in 2001-02, and from 75 to 83 per cent for Class XII.

It is encouraging to hear that there is an Intranet to track the progress of all schools. Could this Intranet also serve as means of building communities of students and teachers for them to share their experiences and learn from each others successes and failures? A web site for each school, maintained and updated by the students and the tearchers would be a good way to start.

Apart from this, there is the possibility of letting well-established private schools take over the buildings of government-run schools, and running them — experiments could be started in a few areas, to see if this can be done on a large-scale. The biggest hurdle to this course of action, of course, will be the teachers employed in government schools.

This is the charter school model that has been in operation in North America for many years now. The jury is still out on how effective they are. But we must certainly try experimenting with this model in India across different states to understand the logistics learn how they will work in practice before deciding to replicate on a wide scale across the country.

School Complexes

The Education Commission set up in 1964, under the chairmanship of Dr. D.S. Kothari (normally referred to as the Kothari Commission) produced a report after two years of study. The report had described the idea of school complexes. The District Primary Education Program web site describes the concept of school complexes as mentioned in the Kothari Commission Report as follows:

The concept of school complexes was developed in Kothari Commission Report (1964-66). It is based on the assumption that High and Higher Secondary schools have better laboratory and library facilities, which can be utilized by the primary and middle schools. These schools have also better qualified and trained teachers; they have larger and well-developed playgrounds and games materials. Five or six primary and upper primary schools, as per convenience, may form a complex and get their academic and administrative support from the nodal secondary/senior secondary school. The attached schools in the complex, may arrange co-curricular activities, give better exposure to their students at the thus formed school complex rather than taking up the matter at block or district level. In case of temporary absence of the teacher due to illness, the school complex head can provide a substitute from a neighbouring school. A large number of academic issues and problems can be discussed at the school complex level by arranging a meeting of all the teachers or otherwise. Thus many states have evolved their own guidelines and formed school complexes.

The school complex model is very similar to the model I described in an earlier post. What I called the Central Unit (CU) could well be the nodal secondary/senior secondary school and the Local Units (LUs) could be the primary and upper primary schools that are attached to the CU. But I don't know if the school complex concept has been implemented anywhere over the past 35 years since the Kothari Commission Report came out. If anyone knows something about this, please do let me know.

Another thought that struck me was that the private schools that are being set up with substantial investments by various corporates like Reliance, Birlas and various other organisations involved in education could possibly become the CU and set up satellite schools themselves to leverage their infrastructure better. Need to think this through a bit more and try and write up a concept note on what a private school can do.

Madrassas in India

An op-ed in The Hindu (that appeared in May 2003) provides a good overview of the Madrassas in India tracing their evolution, their role in the past and the present, and challenges for the future.

Educational Subcontracting - a model from the British colonial period in India

I happened on an article titled Educational "Subcontracting" and the Spread of Religious Nationalism: Hindu and Muslim Nationalist Schools in Colonial India which provides some information on the education policy of the British in India during the 1800s and early 1900s. The author describes the British policy of focussing on (Indian) private-sector provision of primary education after 1854, with British subsidies being widely distributed to private Indian schools, which the author claims was central to the replacement of more traditional forms of education with Western-style ones.

The article suggests

Colonial powers that dedicated any resources to education at all often attempted to build education systems on the cheap through a process of educational "subcontracting," in which schools run by local groups were afforded state subsidies if they met state educational regulations regarding matters such as the age of students, the training of teachers, and the content of curriculum. Building an educational system through "subcontracting" could have powerful implications for the construction of various types of nationalist identities because it provided private groups advocating such identities with unprecedented resources, which could make their construction of extended school systems economically viable.

and examines the case of a group whose state-supported schools did just that — the Arya Samaj, a Hindu religious reform movement founded in 1875 in north India, which runs the DAV group of educational institutions. The article also describes another similar example of a Muslim reform movement, Muhammadiya, started in 1912 in Indonesia, which also benefited similarly from state subsidies from the colonial Dutch government.

It is interesting to note that the "Subcontracting" model has been around from as far back as the 1800s. The recent charter school model in North America is doing very much the same thing as are many state governments in India which provide state subsidies to many schools run by private trusts.