Starter Kit. Idea 326 of 500. Cluster 16
Tuition classes that publish their pass rates, so that parents can compare
The mechanism, from the book
177,000 qualify every year and 45,000 get a place. The other 130,000 are a market that nobody has built for, and the polytechnic is not a second choice when it leads to a job.
The first step
Publish your own tuition class's pass rate from last year, with the students' consent and the number who sat, on a single printed sheet. Then offer to do the same for three other tuition teachers, and ask parents at the gate whether a published pass rate would change where they send their child. Teachers who ask you to verify their results are the proof.
- Who pays first
- A tuition teacher with good results who will pay to have them verified and published, because parents choose on reputation.
- What leaves today
- Parents choose tuition by rumour, so the money they spend rewards reputation rather than results, and good teachers cannot prove it.
Ask first
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what consent you need to publish students' exam results.
Check before you spend
Each student's written consent before their result appears, that results are checked against official slips, and that the count of students who sat is shown.
Find out these three numbers
- Would a published pass rate change where parents send children?
- How many tuition teachers would pay to have results verified?
- What would a teacher pay for verification each year?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House, the published rules. Chapter Seventeen
"None of that is a value. All of it is checkable, which is the only property that matters."
A published, checkable pass rate does more for parents than any advertisement on a wall.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.