Paying for failure and the Concorde fallacy

The examination bodies have withheld the results of secondary school students of some states (including my own) due to lack of payment.  Therefore, I’ve decided to share the column I wrote about the same issue in January of this year.  Enjoy. Immediately I joined government, I mentioned to the governor the success of Dr. Tilde’s […]

The examination bodies have withheld the results of secondary school students of some states (including my own) due to lack of payment.  Therefore, I’ve decided to share the column I wrote about the same issue in January of this year.  Enjoy.

Immediately I joined government, I mentioned to the governor the success of Dr. Tilde’s model secondary school programme which he headed for the Bauchi State Government during the time of Governor Adamu Mu’azu.  At the same time, I initiated a discussion with Dr. Tilde to enquire about his availability and whether he was willing to help.  “Model schools are short-gap solutions in a situation of widespread failure of standards,” Dr. Tilde said. “So fix a date, prepare accommodation and I will be there for the brainstorming session on the issue.”
I suggested that Dr. Tilde should help us in Niger, not because we don’t have experts in the state, but because many problems of our people have troubled me for years and even before the elections, I had a shortlist of experts within and outside the country who have solved such problems in the past, so that in the future, they could be called upon for intervention when the opportunity comes.  It’s usually better to give a problem to an individual who has solved the problem before than to gamble on someone who has not.
One of such challenges that have troubled us for many years is the embarrassing mass failure of our secondary school students in exit examinations such WAEC and NECO.  In this case, Dr. Tilde succeeded almost immediately, recording a 98% success rate.
So when Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State recently announced that his administration will continue paying for the WAEC or NECO examination fee (the parents have to choose one) of secondary school students despite the fact that majority of the students (91.5 percent) have failed the examination over the last five years, I urged caution; because this huge expense benefits no one in Niger State.  Rather, I felt that the money should be used in improving the quality of instruction in secondary schools in the state.  Some weeks ago, the following is what I wrote when the state government made the announcement.  Let me know what you think.
Governor Bello is concerned about education, but paying WAEC or NECO fees on behalf of parents doesn’t appear to be a good incentive that would reduce the misery of mass failure.
His administration inherited – from PDP – about N250 million debt owed to WAEC alone. Then there’s NECO, NABTEB and the other exam for Arabic and Islamic studies.  If memory serves, the total amount owed the examination bodies that the PDP handed over to him was about N600 million.
Authors of Freakonomics pointed at the obvious when they stated that wherever good incentives are designed, there will always be individuals seeking to unfairly profit from them. In their book, Think Like a Freak, the same authors ask: “Think of the last time you sat down at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. How likely were you to eat a bit more than normal?”
This seems to be the case in Niger. When the previous administration of Governor Babangida Aliyu announced the payment, enrollment increased multiple times.
This should be a good thing. However, apart from the fact that students from other states are coming to enroll in Niger to benefit from the programme, the multitudes that sit the exams every year fail. So the government is only paying for failure.
For the last five years (2009-2014), 91.5% of students from Niger State failed WAEC. And they were not better by much in NECO and NABTEB.
The mock exams that are supposed to screen and reduce the number of students, have not worked.
What to do?
The government should adopt the approach I used when a politician in Bida recently asked me to pay exam fees for some students.  “Go and sit the examination,” I told them.  “When you pass, I will refund every penny you paid.”  This way, they would take the examinations seriously.  Even without the wherewithal, if a parent is sure his child would pass, he would borrow to pay.  If not, he wouldn’t waste his money.  We shouldn’t allow a small segment of the population to overconsume the scarce resources.
However, I concede that incentives and subsidies are difficult to remove once entrenched – especially for politicians. When David Cameron asked the authors of Freakonomics for advice. One of their recommendations was for the government to stop funding healthcare, which was 10 percent of UK’s GDP and nearly doubled that of the United States.
However, those who live in the UK know that it is almost an impossible undertaking for any leader or party. Thus, Cameron simply ignored their counsel. Even in the US where Americans don’t have such benefits, government still funds some subsidies which have lost their meaning- especially in agriculture.
It’s called the sunk cost fallacy or the Concorde fallacy.  The British and French governments who were the two major patrons of the supersonic airplane believed it was unlikely to be viable, but couldn’t stop spending on it because of the billions already expended.  We believe that it is counterproductive to quit after we’ve heavily invested in something.
Therefore, I’m not asking for the government to completely remove the incentive. Government should instead refund only the students who have passed –   at least for now.  When the state government’s renewed efforts to improve education start bearing fruits, then the government can reintroduce the incentive.
Some may argue that some parents can’t pay. But if they have confidence in the abilities of their children, they can borrow – we’ve microfinance banks now, they also have friends and have cooperatives and community associations.  During our time, our parents also didn’t have much, yet they found a way to pay for us.
This way, the government wouldn’t be wasting about 600 million every year on failure.
If you give me 600 million naira, I would computerize almost all our secondary schools and install e-libraries accessible enough for the students and their teachers to download (without the use of Internet) video lectures , apps and text books using only their mobile phone – which everyone has now.
Therefore, we should double our efforts in the improvement of instruction.  Governor Bello has already earmarked the secondary schools to be turned into centers of excellence, following his father’s example who was wildly successful with a similar programme when he was the military governor of Kano State.  Let’s focus on that, and call in the experts such as Dr. Tilde to help us.
As of this moment, no one benefits from this free money.  The students who fail do not benefit.  The parents who have to recalculate the future of their children do not benefit.  And the government which spends so much on the programme does not benefit.  So, no return on investment, ROI.  The government can’t use these students to plan for future development, because they lack human capital.  The only beneficiaries appear to be the examination bodies and the corrupt principals who take bribes to enroll external students.