Page 180 - DEDU503_EDUCATIONAL_MANAGEMENT_ENGLISH

Educational Management

Notes Finally, it is important to mention the issue of scale, In general, those alternatives with high fixed
costs such as those with large investments in facilities and equipment will require a high enrollment
or utilization to reach their best cost-effectiveness ratios. The reason for this is that fixed costs
represented by a building or an educational television network of transmitters and receiving stations
cannot be readily adjusted to demand and must be fully utilized to obtain the lowest level of cost
per unit of output. In contrast, alternatives that are constituted largely of variable costs such as
personnel will have costs that are less sensitive to the scale of output.

Variable costs are derived from inputs or ingredients that can be readily increased or decreased.
Thus, a comparison of cost-effectiveness of alternatives that differ in terms of their intensities of
fixed versus variable costs may produce very different results depending upon the scale of enrollment
or output. Accordingly, estimates should be made among the alternatives for the specific levels of
output that are pertinent rather than assuming a general pattern from cost estimation at only one
level of scale.

14.5 Educational Applications

Cost-effectiveness studies have been carried out on teacher training, teacher selection, educational
television and radio, choice of a mathematics curriculum, computer-assisted instruction and also
increasing the school day, reducing class size, an cross-age tutoring. Among studies and interventions
should be viewed cautiously given that the studies were done.
14.5.1 Curriculum
Curriculum is an area that is very appropriate for cost-effectiveness analysis. In the quest for
educational improvement, schools face numerous ways in which they can organize the pace, content,
and method of instruction. Some are likely to be more effective than others, and there may also be
substantial differences in resource requirements with respect to such ingredients as teacher time,
materials, equipment, and so on. As with many other areas of education, the potential for using
cost-effectiveness analysis has barely been tapped in the curriculum field.
An excellent cost-effectiveness study of fifth grade mathematics curriculum was carried out by.
Their evaluation compared two approaches to teaching mathematics, a traditional curriculum and
an alternative one. Using the ingredients method, the researchers found that the alternative
mathematics program cost about 50 percent more than the traditional mathematics program, but the
effectiveness of the alternative program was also higher. Depending upon how student achievement
was measured, the alternative mathematics program was found to be from 60 percent to 300 percent
more cost-effective -- cost per point of achievement score -- than the traditional program.
14.5.2 Teacher Training
A study of teacher training in Sri Lanka compared the cost-effectiveness of training in colleges of
education and in teacher colleges as well as through distance education. Teacher performance and
pupil achievement were used as measures of effectiveness. Teachers who had received distance
education were almost as effective as those trained in colleges of education and teachers’ college.
Cost-effectiveness analysis consists of three steps : (a) The costs of the alternatives must be carefully
measured, for example expenditure on teacher salaries, books and learning materials in each type
of school; (b) the outcomes or educational effectiveness of the alternatives must be measured, for
example by standardized test scores of pupils in each school; finally, (c) costs and effectiveness
measures are combined to calculate a cost-effectiveness ratio, for example by dividing the effectiveness
of each alternative by its cost to show the unit cost of achieving a particular objective, such as a 1 per
cent improvement in pupil achievement. Such a ratio is described in one cost-effectiveness study as
“the achievement gain per dollar spent” The most cost-effective alternative can then be identified -
for example the school that produces the greatest improvement in pupil achievement for a given
cost or alternatively the school where pupils achieve the required examination results at least cost.

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