Pakistan

Pakistan: Technology boosts education reform in remote areas
Technology solutions, spearheaded by a US$100 million grant from GPE, are transforming governance and accountability in the Balochistan and Sindh provinces of Pakistan, improving education for children facing the greatest barriers.
  • Partner since: 2012
  • Coordinating agency: UNICEF, Islamabad, FCDO – Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
  • 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.

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.

Punjab is the most populous province in Pakistan, with over 110 million people (54% of Pakistan’s population). Punjab has the largest education system in Pakistan, with over 24 million children enrolled in schools, both public and private.

Punjab province has developed its education development vision and strategies in the New Deal 2018-2023. The Punjab Education Sector Plan (PESP) 2019/2020 - 2023/24 builds on previous education reforms and reflects the vision and ongoing reforms as laid out in the New Deal. The School Education Department (SED), the Special Education Department (SpEd) and the Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education Department (LNFBED) have a joint responsibility for the delivery of basic education in Punjab for children aged 5-16.

The basic education system in Punjab consists of pre-primary, primary (grades 1-5), middle/ elementary (grades 6-8), secondary education (grades 9-10) and higher secondary education (grades 11-12).

In recent years, the government of Punjab has undertaken a series of reforms to address both demand and supply-side education bottlenecks, including campaigns and incentives for school enrollment through stipends to girl students. New governance structures were put in place at central and district levels to strengthen operational capacity and management.

Teacher training was decentralized to the district and cluster levels, and more emphasis was attached to subject content and pedagogy. Curriculum was revised to place more focus on scientific learning. Formative assessments were gradually introduced at post-primary levels. Efforts were being made to improve school facilities to create a more conducive learning environment.

The basic education system in Sindh consists of pre-primary, primary (grades 1-5), middle/elementary (grades 6-8), secondary education (grades 9-10) and higher secondary education (grades 11-12).

The School Education and Literacy Department is responsible for the delivery of free and compulsory basic education for children aged 5-16.

Despite progress, the education sector is still facing many challenges:

  • high disparity in education access and retention, especially from middle education level upwards (nearly 50% of children leave school by grade 5)
  • high prevalence of multi-grade teaching
  • lack of middle and secondary schools
  • low teacher quality due to lack of appropriate training and shortage of teachers
  • low learning outcomes.

The Sindh Education Sector Plan and Roadmap 2019-2024 outlines the strategic direction, drawing on data from the education sector analysis completed in 2019.

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

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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

Utilization US$34,000,000

Years 2015-2019

Grant agent WB

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.

Allocation US$50,625,000

Utilization US$0

Years 2020-2021

Grant agent FCDO

The $50.6 million grant supports Punjab’s “Transformation in Access, Learning, Equity and Education Management” (TALEEM) program, which addresses key challenges in equity, efficiency and learning as identified in the sector plan. The program has 7 components:

  1. Rethink teachers’ development through:
    • A 5-year continuous professional development program focusing on imparting core teaching competencies followed by advanced teaching and leadership skills
    • developing the capacity of Assistant Education Officers as effective mentors
    • training teachers via e-learning and AEO mentoring
    • making use of digitized Classroom Observation Tool
    • Mentoring teachers through monthly classroom observations, use of improved lesson plans, instructional videos, handbooks and regular follow-up.
  2. Inclusive education initiative in two districts with the highest number of children with disabilities:
    • Make schools premises accessible to children with mild disabilities
    • Train teachers on inclusive learning techniques (differentiated and tiered learning), and classroom management
    • Screen children to identify disabilities
    • Provide assistive devices depending on the need (hearing aids, visual aids)
  3. Enable the differently abled by providing assistive devices for children with disabilities enrolled in 259 special education institutions:
    • Screening students to identify special needs
    • Provide assistive devices based on their needs (incl. low vision devices, magnifying glasses, hearing aids, wheelchairs, walkers, support sticks/ crutches)
  4. Extend formal schooling to out-of-school children aged 5-9 in 12 selected districts with lowest education participation rates:
    • Awareness campaign using door-to-door household survey to identify OOSC, sensitize them on education and enroll them
    • Train master trainers and teachers in alternative learning pathway
    • Provide accelerated learning course to enable OOSC to ramp up their knowledge base and to facilitate their enrollment in formal schools.
  5. Establish 1,000 non-formal education institutions for children aged 5-9 in remote areas of four target districts with lowest participation rates, where no formal schools are available:
    • Train non-formal education master trainers
    • Recruit and train new non-formal education teachers (women)
    • Provide basic supplies to support teaching
    • Create awareness in communities with highest out-of-school children and generate demand
  6. Effective communication to generate demand for education:
    • Organize educational events, campaigns, sports, competition of extracurricular activities
    • Conduct activities that target the community at large, parents, students and teachers
    • Reward high achieving students, teachers, community members
    • Engage the media
  7. Evidence-based decision making at sectoral level through integrated management information system:
    • Integrate data from all concerned departments into a single system
    • Identify and collect missing data essential for sector planning and monitoring
    • Digitalize data to facilitate users’ access
    • Provide an easy-to-use tool for data access/analysis and utilization for decision-making.

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

Allocation US$31,112,500

Utilization US$0

Years 2020-2021

Grant agent WB

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 Utilization Grant agent  
Pakistan
COVID-19 2020-2021 20,000,000 0 WB  
Balochistan
Program implementation 2015-2019 34,000,000 34,000,000 WB 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 FCDO  
Program development 2020-2021 165,885 0 FCDO  
Punjab
Program implementation 2020 50,625,000 0 FCDO  
Sector plan development 2017-2019 499,900 499,900 FCDO  
Program development 2019-2020 200,000 0 FCDO  
Sindh
Program implementation 2020 31,112,500 0 WB  
2015-2017 65,730,921 65,730,921 WB Completion report
Sector plan development 2017-2019 498,465 498,465 WB  
2012-2014 241,187 241,187 UNICEF  
Program development 2019-2020 200,000 164,619 WB  
2013-2014 188,092 188,092 WB  
  Total 204,566,160 101,323,184    
Data last updated: May 04, 2021

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

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 April 30, 2021