Pakistan

Ms. Najeeba, a higher secondary school student, is teaching her young siblings in her home located at Tawakal Bazar Mundi, District Gwadar, Balochistan, under the Mera Ghar Mera School (My Home My School) program. Tawakal Bazar Mundi, Tehsil Gwadar, District Gwadar, Balochistan. Credit: UNICEF/Adil Nodezai, District Manager, Gwadar, Balochistan
Pakistan: Expanding equal access to learning during coronavirus
GPE is supporting Pakistan to cope with the negative impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on the education system. A US$20 million grant will support the federal and provincial governments to strengthen their capacity to respond to, and recover from, the COVID-19 crisis, while ensuring the most vulnerable children are not left behind.
  • Partner since: 2012
  • Coordinating agency: UNICEF
  • Secretariat country lead: Hoa Tran Ringrose
  • Board constituency: Asia and the Pacific

COVID-19 response

Allocation: US$20 million

Years: 2020-2021

Grant agent: World Bank

Key documents:

The US$20 million COVID-19 grant will:

  • Strengthen the federal and provincial governments’ institutional capacity to respond to, and recover from, the COVID-19 crisis, and build resilience to face future crises, with a focus on disadvantaged areas and vulnerable populations
  • Offer school children a wide range of distance learning channels - TV, TeleSchool, radio, print media, social media, and mobile applications - and distribute learning materials to students living in remote areas
  • Support the design and implementation of an inclusive distance learning certification pathway to target the 19.1 million out-of-school children and those who would leave schools due to the negative shocks to household income caused by COVID-19
  • Focus on vulnerable populations, concentrated mostly in remote areas of the country, and especially girls who are especially prone to dropping out of school as a result of socioeconomic shocks and have lower access to technology equipment such as mobile/tablet/TV/radio
  • Train teachers in remedial education, distance learning strategies and learning assessments to effectively support children’s education
  • Provide schools with basic sanitization and hygiene supplies to ensure they meet standards
  • Supply students with learning materials to encourage them to return to school.

These initiatives are based on the Ministry of Education’s COVID-19 response plan.

In late March 2020, the UNICEF office in Pakistan received a GPE grant of US$140,000 to support the Ministry of Education with developing a national response and recovery plan.

Education in Pakistan

The delivery of education services in Pakistan is severely impacted by economic, political and security challenges that the country has been facing for some years.

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, approved in 2010, devolved responsibility for education delivery and spending to provincial governments. The federal ministry retains some limited mandates, mainly in curriculum development, accreditation and the financing of research and development.

See a comprehensive interactive map of education rankings across Pakistan.

Balochistan faces many challenges in the education sector including a large number of out-of-school children, high dropout rates, wide gender disparities in education indicators and poor quality of teaching and learning in the classroom.

In 2015/2016, Balochistan allocated 20% of its total budget to education (source: Public Financing of Education in Pakistan)

The government of Balochistan is committed to addressing the multiple challenges in the education sector and has identified the issue of poor access to education as the most important priority and the greatest challenge.

The Balochistan Education Sector Plan 2013-2018 focuses on the following priorities:

  1. Improving access and equity for all girls and boys to school by:
    • Building and upgrading schools in communities where there is little or no access to school.
    • Improving transition rates between levels (early childhood education to primary, primary to middle, middle to high).
    • Reducing dropout by improving learning outcomes.
    • Expanding alternate forms of delivery including private sector management, community school development, among others.
  2. Improving the quality of education by:
    • Developing the capacity of education managers and professionals including teachers, examiners, curriculum and textbook developers.
    • Developing learning standards and benchmarks.
    • Improving assessment capacity.
    • Preparing a new school language policy conducive to learning.

Governance and management improvements are central to the BESP, which focuses on improving managerial capacity for management and supervision, and improving information collection mechanisms and their use.

Education outcomes remain weak in Sindh. Inequities in access to education occur between districts, rural and urban areas, the poor and the non-poor, and between genders. Generally, girls in rural areas as well as boys and girls from households in the lowest income quintiles are at the highest risk of being out of school.

Improving governance and accountability within the education system, notably through the better management of teachers and resources, is seen as the most important undertaking to foster improvements in education outcomes.

The Sindh Education Sector Plan 2014-2018 focuses on increasing access to education for the most-marginalized children including girls, and improving learning outcomes along with governance and accountability of the education sector.

The main objectives of the plan are:

  1. Increasing equitable access to quality early childhood education, primary, and secondary education with the aim of eliminating social exclusion, enhancing transitions, promoting social cohesion and providing greater opportunities for access, participation and learning to marginalized groups, particularly girls.
  2. Improving the quality of learning outcomes by providing teachers with tools to conduct ongoing classroom assessments of learning in core subjects such as reading and mathematics, increasing funding for quality-enhancing inputs such as reading materials, science equipment and textbooks, as well as quality assurance standards focusing on learning outcomes rather than inputs.
  3. Strengthening the governance and service delivery by improving capacity at the school, district, and provincial levels including but not limited to agreed school standards and strong public-private partnerships.
  4. Enhancing equitable resource allocation and improving the fiscal sustainability and effectiveness of educational expenditure, thereby fostering transparency and accountability in the use of public resources.

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Latest grants

Year 6 student Rimsha Farooq reads during class at Khinger Khurd school, Punjab Province, Pakistan. Sept. 2012. Credit STARS/Kristian Buus

Development objective: Increase school enrollment and retention in project supported schools, with a special focus on girls’ participation, and to develop mechanisms for information collection and use for improved management of education

Allocation US$34,000,000

Disbursements US$34,000,000

Years 2015-2019

Grant agent World Bank

Program document

Progress report

The US$34 million GPE grant allocated to Balochistan, supervised by the World Bank, aimed to:

  • Improve access and equity by expanding access through community school mechanisms and supporting transition to higher levels of education. In addition to this, a special focus will be given to teacher professional development and improved learning environment to make sure that teachers have adequate pedagogical skills to teach children in higher grades.
  • Improve quality of early childhood education in the newly established schools through teacher capacity building and provision of simple teaching and learning management tools for them. School information systems will be enhanced to improve the validity of data and increase accountability of teaching and learning in schools.
  • Provide technical assistance for improved capacity for management and monitoring, to support the establishment of systems and procedures for effective planning and implementation of the project activities, and at the same time develop robust monitoring systems.

The Balochistan local education group (LEG) is chaired by the Education Department (SED) and includes representatives from the education department, Canada, DFAT-Australia, UNESCO, UNICEF, USAID, Germany, the World Bank and civil society organizations. UNICEF is the coordinating agency.

Development objective: Strengthen the institutional capacity to generate, disseminate and use information to support the implementation of key reforms

Allocation US$66,000,000

Disbursements US$65,730,921

Years 2015-2017

Grant agent World Bank

Program document

Completion report

The US$66 million GPE grant aimed to strengthen the institutional capacity to generate, disseminate and use information to support the implementation of key reforms under the education sector plan. It was supervised by the World Bank.

The funds financed two components:

  1. Systems strengthening, which supports interventions in the following three reform areas:
    • Sindh School Monitoring System to support the design and roll out of a school monitoring system for collecting, analyzing, disseminating and using data on specific school-level indicators, including student enrollment and teacher presence.
    • Human Resources Monitoring and Information System to strengthen the management of teaching and non-teaching staff.
    • Communications strengthening to design a communications strategy and other communication and consultation activities.
  2. Program support, focused on technical, advisory, and capacity-building support to develop, implement, and monitor the focus areas under the project.

The Sindh LEG includes 35 members including representatives from the Sindh Education and Literacy Department (ELD), Canada, DFID, JICA, UNESCO, UNICEF, USAID, the World Bank, the European Union, private sector and civil society organizations. UNICEF is the coordinating agency.

Grants

All amounts are in US dollars.

Grant type Years Allocations Disbursements Grant agent  
Pakistan
COVID-19 2020 19,850,000 0 World Bank  
Balochistan
Program implementation 2015-2019 34,000,000 34,000,000 World Bank Progress report
Sector plan development 2018-2020 460,350 0 UNICEF  
Program development 2020-2021 143,860 0 UNICEF  
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Sector plan development 2019-2020 500,000 0 DFID  
Program development 2020-2021 165,885 0 DFID  
Punjab
Program implementation 2020 50,625,000 0 DFID  
Sector plan development 2017-2019 499,900 499,900 DFID  
Program development 2019-2020 200,000 0 DFID  
Sindh
Program implementation 2015-2017 66,000,000 65,730,921 World Bank Completion report
Sector plan development 2017-2019 499,400 499,400 World Bank  
2012-2014 241,187 241,187 UNICEF  
Program development 2019-2020 200,000 164,619 World Bank  
2013-2014 188,092 188,092 World Bank  
  Total 173,573,674 101,324,119    
Data last updated: July 27, 2020

GPE has also provided the Pakistan Coalition for Education - An initiative of Society for Access to Quality Education (PCE) with a grant from the Civil Society Education Fund, to support its engagement in education sector policy dialogue and citizens’ voice in education quality, equity, and financing and sector reform.

Education sector progress

The graphs below show overall progress in the education sector in Pakistan, and GPE data for Balochistan and Sindh show the country progress on 16 indicators monitored in the GPE Results Framework.

Primary Completion Rate (%)

Lower secondary completion rate

Out-of-school rate for children of primary school age

Out-of-school rate for adolescents of lower secondary school age

Pre-primary gross enrollment rate

Gender parity index for out-of-school rate – Primary and lower secondary

Public Expenditure on Education as Share of GDP (%)

Students/trained teacher ratio

Teachers Trained (%)

Source: World Bank - Education Data
Data on education are compiled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics from official responses to surveys and from reports provided by education authorities in each country.

Last updated June 23, 2020