Private Contracting and Education Management Organizations
Private Contracting and EMOs
The idea
A school does far more than teach: food, sports, transport, cleaning, counseling. Many of these can be run by private firms under contract.
Why contract out
If outside firms deliver more efficiently, a school district can concentrate on teaching instead of running a cafeteria or bus service.
EMOs
Education Management Organizations supply management services: assessment, budgeting, administration.
A side benefit
When exams are written outside the school, teachers cannot teach to the test, so instruction tends to improve.
A school delivers far more than lessons. Under the single word “education” sit meals, sports facilities, transport, cleaning, and welfare counseling. None of these is teaching, yet a school cannot function without them. Private contracting is the practice of handing these services to outside firms rather than running everything in-house.
The Services Behind the Teaching
Think about how much a school provides beyond the classroom. Children need food, since a hungry student cannot work well through a long day. They need space and equipment for sport so they grow up physically healthy. They need welfare counseling, which matters more as young people meet risks earlier through the internet and peer pressure. Sometimes counseling calls for professional help from outside, because a proper response starts with diagnosis before any remedy.
Many of these support services can be delivered by private firms under contract. A school need not buy its own textbooks, cook its own meals, or run its own bus fleet. It can contract a bookshop for texts and stationery, a firm for cleaning, and operators for transport, while staying responsible for making sure the service is actually available.
If private contractors deliver these services more efficiently than a government agency, a system has good reason to encourage more contracting. The government can also learn from how the private sector runs them.
Paying outside firms to run non-teaching school services.
Meals, transport, cleaning, textbooks, sport, and counseling can be supplied by private companies under contract, so the school itself does not have to operate every service directly.
Education Management Organizations
In the 1990s a new niche appeared: the Education Management Organization, or EMO. These firms supply management services to schools rather than support services. Their work covers student assessment, budgeting, and administration, the running of the school as an operation.
Outside assessment carries a quiet advantage. When teachers write their own exams, they tend to teach toward those questions. When the test papers come from outside and staff never see them until exam day, teaching aims at the subject itself rather than at the paper. That said, well-trained teachers and administrators can also raise the quality of testing done inside a school.
Handing off the non-teaching load frees a school to concentrate on instruction. With meals, transport, and management in other hands, staff can put their attention where it counts most.
Teachers cannot teach to a test they never see.
When an outside body sets the paper, staff prepare students for the whole subject rather than for a specific set of questions, so instruction tends to be broader and stronger.
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