Pakistan: Increasing Access and Quality through Education Reforms in Punjab

Overview

The World Bank is working with the Government of Punjab in Pakistan to improve education for school children through a range of initiatives, from cash stipends, low-cost private schools to more effective school councils. The Bank’s Punjab Education Sector Project helps provide stipends to 380,000 female students in grades 6-8, free textbooks to all students in public schools, improved access to quality education for over 857,096 students – more than half of them are girls – in 1,768 low cost private schools, as well as capacity support to 54,000 school councils.

Challenge

Pakistan is ranked 145 out of 187 countries in the Human Development Index. The country’s performance in education has generally been poor in absolute terms, relative to other countries in South Asia, and relative to other developing countries at its level of per capita income. Given the present trend, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reports that the country is unlikely to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education by 2015. Standard education indicators in Punjab tend to be comparable or slightly higher than those of other provinces, the edge for Punjab largely appearing with respect to girls. Weaknesses in planning, budgeting and expenditure management within the sector have seriously undermined the government of Punjab’s ability to make significant progress towards the MDGs.

Approach

The Punjab Education Sector Project promoted and supported government actions to introduce, strengthen, and ensure the running of institutions and systems. The project has laid the foundations for one of the most robust, streamlined, and effective monitoring systems in the country, with data coming from an annual school census as well as a third-party monitoring system outside of the education department. Coupled with systematic evaluation of student achievement through universal assessments for grades 5 and 8 by the Punjab Examination Commission, these integrated databases provide significant insights for targeting interventions to address school-level gaps in participation and achievement.

The project’s innovative, results-based design, specifically the use of Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) and covenants, has aided the provincial government in focusing on and satisfactorily achieving the majority of agreed implementation progress and performance targets.

Results

The Punjab Education Sector Project, which is focused on strengthening institutional capacity and governance in the sector, has helped to support improvements in key performance indicators.

• The ratio of female-male primary net enrollment in rural areas has increased from 89 percent to 92 percent from 2006-07 to 2010-11.
• Foundation-Assisted Schools of Punjab Education Foundation have expanded from 18 to 29 program districts in the province, reaching 857,096 children in 2011 from 576,669 children in 2008.
• Impact evaluation results for Foundation-Assisted Schools show that the program has raised enrollment by 40 percent and student achievement by 0.3-0.5 standard deviations within two years, roughly contributing to one-to-two additional years of learning at school.
• 54,000 School councils have received annual grants and capacity building support, since 2009, to improve and monitor school performance.

Voices

Since studying at this school, the school building has improved remarkably. The teachers now come to school regularly and so do we. 

— Akbar, Primary School Student in Rural Punjab

Map

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