The idea of educational vouchers as a way of increasing choice for parents dissatisfied with their children’s schooling was originally articulated in the 1960s. What are the implications of this voucher system in developing countries? Can it enhance achievement among students and encourage improvement through increased competition among schools? This paper, compiled for Teachers College, Columbia University, analyses the Colombian voucher plan in terms of its finance, regulation and support service provisions and scrutinises the programme outcomes.
In the context of a major decentralisation initiative, the Colombian voucher plan was implemented in 1991 in collaboration with the World Bank. It aimed to increase private sector participation in education and achieve full secondary coverage by the year 2000. Also to expand education by exploiting existing private sector infrastructure and reducing excess demand in the public sector.
By 1990, Colombian secondary enrolment rates were less than 50 percent, with an enormous primary/secondary enrolment gap at the bottom of the economic scale. This discrepancy was attributed to inadequate resources, high costs, overcrowding and children’s need to work. The voucher plan aimed to achieve major secondary education reform in a number of ways:
- Opening up some public school places by moving a small number of public students into private schools.
- Providing increased choice for parents by encouraging schools to participate and creating voucher schools catering specifically to voucher students.
- Awarding fixed price vouchers for private tuition to the poorest students as an incentive to do well academically and, where tuition exceeded the voucher amount, parents could add on additional amounts through personal expense.
- Increasing equity for students from the lowest economic strata by providing fair access to educational resources, expand freedom of choice, reduce marginalisation and contribute to increased social cohesion.
- By discouraging politicisation and encouraging participation. The programme was administered and regulated beyond the Ministry of Education and payments were handled directly through the banking system.
Overall, the Colombian voucher plan served over 125,000 before being terminated in 1999 because of bureaucratic and political obstacles. The programme did expand the number of secondary school places and enrolments, but it provided neither equitable schools nor distribution of resources. Given frequent donor pressure for decentralisation, the Colombian example provides a number of lessons for future engagement in education reform:
- Education in Colombia had been highly centralised and the transition presented a range of administrative, regulatory and financial challenges and met with strong opposition from the national teachers’ union.
- The voucher system failed to include any provision for transportation, which denied access to the poorest students.
- Although the voucher amount increased, it failed to keep pace with inflation.
- The overall improvement in grades might have been attributed to the incentive for participating schools to pass students to maintain income through voucher funds.
- Municipal participation in the programme was inequitably skewed towards urban areas, which raised concerns about geographic equity.
- The voucher was not an option for the poorest students. The ‘add-on’ personal expenditure was only feasible for better off families.
