Pakistan Labor Force Survey (LFS) 2020-21


https://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/labour_force/publication...

Literacy rate goes up (62.4%, 62.8%) more in case of males (73.0%, 73.4%) than females
(51.5%, 51.9%). Area-wise rates suggest increase in rural (53.7%, 54.0%) and in urban
(76.1%, 77.3%). Male-female disparity seems to be narrowing down with the time span.
Literacy rate goes up in all provinces: KP (52.4%, 55.1%), Sindh (61.6%, 61.8%), Balochistan
(53.9%, 54.5%) and in Punjab (66.1%, 66.3%) during the comparative periods

-----------------

an average monthly wages of overall paid employees is of Rs.24028
per month while the median monthly wages is Rs. 18000 per month. . However, gender
disparities were obvious in the mean monthly wages gap between males and females of Rs.
4526 in favour of males. Based on median monthly wages, the gap, still in favour of males, is
Rs. 6,900. The above table also shows that irrespective of occupation both mean and median
monthly wages of males are higher than those of females

----------
4.20 Major Industry Divisions: Occupational Safety and Health
Mainly, the sufferers belong to agriculture (29.3%), construction (19.7%), manufacturing
(19.1%), wholesale & retail trade (13.7%) and transport/storage & communication (10.2%).
Female injuries in agriculture sectors are more than twice (61.7%) than that of male injuries
(26.3%). In manufacturing, female injuries (24.7%) and Community, social and personal services
(8.9%) are more than male injuries (18.6%) and (6.5%) respectively. Contrarily, males are
more vulnerable in the remaining groups. Comparative risk profiles run down for major
industries grouping while gain stream for manufacturing, transport, storage & communication
and community, social & personnel services.

World Bank approves $258m to support healthcare in Pakistan

https://www.dawn.com/news/1693770/world-bank-approves-258m-to-suppo...

The World Bank has approved $258 million to strengthen primary health care systems and accelerate national efforts towards universal health coverage in Pakistan, a press release issued by the international financial institution said on Wednesday.

The National Health Support Programme "complements ongoing investments in human capital and builds on health reforms that aim to improve quality and equitable access to healthcare services, especially in communities lagging behind national and regional-level health outcomes".

It identified three areas of focus for healthcare reforms under the initiative: healthcare coverage and quality of essential services, governance and accountability and healthcare financing.

Elaborating on these areas, the statement said the programme focused on healthcare coverage and quality of essential services to ensure availability of adequate staffing, supplies and medicines and to enhance patient referral systems for expediting emergency and higher-level care.


Similarly, the focus on governance and accountability was intended to strengthen oversight and management of primary healthcare services through real-time monitoring of available supplies and essential medicines.

The statement further explained that initiatives in this area included setting up a central information platform for provincial authorities to assess gaps in service delivery across public and private healthcare facilities.

Moreover, the focus on healthcare financing was to improve the financial management of primary healthcare centres for better expenditure tracking and budget forecasting to sustain quality healthcare services and delivery.

"The programme will benefit all communities through improvements to provincial primary healthcare systems, particularly [those] in approximately 20 districts that suffer from having the least access to health and nutrition services," the press release read.

According to the press release, the NHSP is co-financed by the International Development Association ($258 million) and two grants ($82 million) from the Global Financing Facility (GEF) for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF), including a $40 million grant for protecting essential health services amid multiple global crises.

“The partnership between the GFF and the government of Pakistan focuses on building sustainable health systems while ensuring that all women, children and adolescents, especially in the most vulnerable communities can access the services they need amid multiple crises,” the statement quoted Monique Vledder, head of secretariat at GFF as saying.

"By investing in primary health care, strengthening the health workforce and equipping community health centres to both respond to emergencies and deliver quality services, Pakistan can drive a more equitable and resilient recovery,” she added.

World Bank Country Director for Pakistan, Najy Benhassine explained that “by strengthening provincial health systems, this programme is foundational to building the country’s human capital and improving health and nutrition outcomes for its citizens".

“Pakistan continues to make strides in health reforms toward ensuring access to primary healthcare services, especially for children and women during pregnancy and childbirth,” he said.

Hnin Hnin Pyne, task team leader for the programme, said: “NHSP creates a national forum for the federal and provincial governments to exchange lessons and collaborate on achieving sustainable health financing and high quality and coverage of essential services. It also helps strengthen engagement between public and private facilities and better coordination among development partners on future investments in health.”

KP Achieves Highest Literacy Rate Growth Among All Provinces
By Haroon Hayder

https://propakistani.pk/2022/06/09/kp-achieves-highest-literacy-rat...


The federal government has launched the Pakistan Economic Survey (PES) 2021-22, detailing how the national economy performed in the current fiscal year that will end on 30 June 2022.

Education Completion Rate
According to PES 2021-22, the Primary Education Completion Rate stood at 67%, Lower Education Completion Rate stood at 47%, and Upper Secondary Education Completion Rate stood at 23%. This shows that more students have completed their education till the primary level.

Literacy Parity Index stood at 0.71, Youth Literacy Parity Index stood at 0.82, Primary Parity Index stood at 0.88, and Secondary Parity Index stood at 0.89.

Pre-Primary Education
The participation rate in organized learning—one year before attaining the official age of entry to primary education— stood at 19%. This number, unfortunately, shows that little consideration is given to pre-primary education.

The percentage population in a given age group achieving at least a specific level of proficiency in functional, literacy, and numeracy skills stood at 60%.

Literacy Rate
In FY2020-21, the literacy rate stood at 62.8%; It was 62.4% in FY 2018-19.


Gender-wise
Gender-wise breakdown shows that the literacy rate among males increased to 73.4% in FY2020-21 from 73% in FY2018-19. The literacy rate among females increased slightly to 51.9% in FY2020-21 from 51.5% in FY 2018-19.

Area-wise
Area-wise analysis suggests that literacy rates in both rural and urban areas have increased. The literacy rate in rural areas increased from 53.7% in FY2018-19 to 54% in FY2020-21. The literacy rate in urban areas increased from 76.1% in FY 2018-19 to 77.3% in FY 2020-21.

Province-wise
Province-wise analysis shows literacy rates in all provinces have increased.

Punjab
The literacy rate in Punjab increased from 66.1% in FY2018-2019 to 66.3% in FY2020-21.


Sindh
The literacy rate in Sindh increased from 61.6% in FY2018-2019 to 61.8% in FY2020-21.

KP
The literacy rate in KP increased from 52.4% in FY2018-2019 to 55.1% in FY2020-21.

Balochistan
The literacy rate in Balochistan increased from 53.9% in FY2018-2019 to 54.5% in FY2020-21.


Initiatives to Improve Education Quality
During FY 2021-22, the federal and provincial governments launched various initiatives to raise the standards of education in line with Goal 4 of the UN SDGs.

These initiatives are:

Enhancing access to education by establishing new schools
Upgrading the existing schools
Improving the learning environment by providing basic educational facilities
Digitization of educational institutions
Enhancing the resilience of educational institutions to cater to unforeseen situations
Promoting distance learning, capacity building of teachers
Improving the hiring of teachers, particularly hiring of science teachers to address the issues of science education
Single National Curriculum
The Single National Curriculum was launched as PTI’s flagship scheme envisioning minimizing the disparity in Pakistan’s education system and providing equal learning opportunities to all segments of society. There are three education systems in the country; public educational institutes, private educational institutes, and religious seminaries.

The SNC will be implemented in three phases. The first phase has been concluded as a uniform curriculum has been introduced from pre 1 to 5 classes at the beginning of the academic year 2021-22.

Pakistan Economic Survey: Health & Nutrition 2021-22

https://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapter_22/PES11-HEALTH.pdf

Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in Pakistan has declined to 54.2 deaths per 1,000 live births
in 2020 from 55.7 in 2019, while Neonatal Mortality Rate declined to 40.4 deaths per
1,000 live births in 2020 from 41.2 in 2019. Percentage of birth attended by skilled
health personnel increased to 69.3 percent in 2020 from 68 percent in 2019 (DHS & UNICEF). Maternal Mortality Ratio fell to 186 maternal deaths per 100,000 births in
2020, from 189 in 2019 (Table 11.1).
With a population growing at 2 percent per annum, Pakistan’s contraceptive prevalence
rate in 2020 decreased to 33 percent from 34 percent in 2019 (Trading Economics).
Pakistan’s tuberculosis incidence is 259 per 100,000 population and HIV prevalence rate
is 0.12 per 1,000 population in 2020.


Table 11.1: Health Indicators of Pakistan
2019 2020
Maternal Mortality Ratio (Per 100,000 Births)* 189 186
Neonatal Mortality Rate (Per 1,000 Live Births) 41.2 40.4
Mortality Rate, Infant (Per 1,000 Live Births) 55.7 54.2
Under-5 Mortality Rate (Per 1,000) 67.3 65.2
Incidence of Tuberculosis (Per 100,000 People) 263 259
Incidence of HIV (Per 1,000 Uninfected Population) 0.12 0.12
Life Expectancy at Birth, (Years) 67.3 67.4
Births Attended By Skilled Health Staff (% of Total)** 68.0 (2015) 69.3 (2018)
Contraceptive Prevalence, Any Methods (% of Women Ages 15-49) 34.0 33
Source: WDI, UNICEF, Trading Economics & Our World in data
-----------

Food and nutrition

Calories/day 2019-20 2457 2020-21 2786 2021-22 2735

-------

Table 11.9: Availability of Major Food Items per annum (Kg per capita)
Food Items 2019-20 2020-21 2021-22 (P)**
Cereals 139.9 170.8 164.7
Pulses 7.8 7.6 7.3
Sugar 23.3 28.5 28.3
Milk (Liter) 168.7 171.8 168.8
Meat (Beef, Mutton, Chicken) 22.0 22.9 22.5
Fish 2.9 2.9 2.9
Eggs (Dozen) 7.9 8.2 8.1
Edible Oil/ Ghee 14.8 15.1 14.5
Fruits & Vegetables 53.6 52.4 68.3
Calories/day 2457 2786 2735
Source: M/o PD&SI (Nutrition Section)

Pakistan Economic Survey: Education 2021-22


https://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapter_22/PES10-EDUCATION.pdf

Pakistan is committed to transform its education system into a high-quality global
market demand driven system in accordance with the Goal 4 of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) which pertains to quality of education. The progress
achieved by Pakistan so far on Goal 4 of SDGs is as under:
 Primary, Lower and Upper Secondary Education Completion Rate stood at 67
percent, 47 percent and 23 percent, respectively, depicting higher Primary
attendance than Lower and Upper Secondary levels.
 Parity Indices at Literacy, Youth Literacy, Primary and Secondary are 0.71, 0.82, 0.88
and 0.89, respectively.
 Participation rate in organized learning (one year before the official primary entry
age), by sex is 19 percent showing a low level of consideration of Pre-Primary
Education.
 Percentage of population in a given age group achieving at least affixed level of
proficiency in functional; (a) literacy and (b) numeracy skills is 60 percent.

--------
Literacy, Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) and Net Enrolment Rate (NER)
Literacy
During 2021-22, PSLM Survey was not conducted due to upcoming Population and
Housing Census 2022. Therefore, the figures for the latest available survey regarding
GER and NER may be considered for the analysis. However, according to Labour Force
Survey 2020-21, literacy rate trends shows 62.8 percent in 2020-21 (as compared to
62.4 percent in 2018-19), more in males (from 73.0 percent to 73.4 percent) than
females (from 51.5 percent to 51.9 percent). Area-wise analysis suggest literacy increase
in both rural (53.7 percent to 54.0 percent) and urban (76.1 percent to 77.3 percent).
Male-female disparity seems to be narrowing down with time span. Literacy rate gone
up in all provinces, Punjab (66.1 percent to 66.3 percent), Sindh (61.6 percent to 61.8
percent), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (52.4 percent to 55.1 percent) and Balochistan (53.9
percent to 54.5 percent). [Table10.2].
Table 10.2: Literacy Rate (10 Years and Above) (Percent)
Province/Area 2018-19 2020-21
Male Female Total Male Female Total
Pakistan 73.0 51.5 62.4 73.4 51.9 62.8
Rural 67.1 40.4 53.7 67.2 40.8 54.0
Urban 82.2 69.7 76.1 83.5 70.8 77.3

--------

During 2021-22, PSLM Survey was not conducted due to upcoming Population and
Housing Census 2022. Therefore, the figures for the latest available survey are reported
here.
Table 10.3: National and Provincial GER (Age 6 -10 years) at Primary Level (Classes1-5)(Percent)
Province/Area 2014-15 2019-20
Male Female Total Male Female Total
Pakistan 98 82 91 89 78 84
Punjab 103 92 98 93 90 92
Sindh 88 69 79 78 62 71
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
(Including Merged Areas)
- - - 96 73 85
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
(Excluding Merged Areas)
103 80 92 98 79 89
Balochistan 89 54 73 84 56 72
Source: Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) District Level Survey, 2019-20,
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

-------------

Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)
Annual Status of Education Report (ASER-Rural) 2021, is the largest citizen-led
household-based learning survey across all provinces/areas: Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab,
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Gilgit Baltistan (GB), Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) and
Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK). According to the ASER 2021, 10,000 trained
volunteer/enumerators surveyed 87,415 households in 4,420 villages across 152 rural
districts of Pakistan. Detailed information of 247,978 children aged 3-16 has been
collected (57 percent male and 43 percent female), and of these, 212,105 children aged
5-16 years were assessed for language and arithmetic competencies. Moreover, 585
transgenders were also a part of the surveyed sample. Major findings of ASER 2021 and
its comparison with 2019 is given in Box-II

http://live.clintonglobalinitiative.org #CGI2016

While the majority of people surveyed consume news regularly, 38% said they often or sometimes avoid the news – up from 29% in 2017 – the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report. Around 36% – particularly those under 35 – say that the news lowers their mood.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/more-people-are-avoi...
-------------------

Positive News | Good journalism about good things - Positive News

Positive News is the magazine for good journalism about good things.

When much of the media is full of doom and gloom, instead Positive News is the first media organisation in the world that is dedicated to quality, independent reporting about what’s going right.

We are pioneers of ‘constructive journalism’ – a new approach in the media, which is about rigorous and relevant journalism that is focused on progress, possibility, and solutions. We publish daily online and Positive News magazine is published quarterly in print.

As a magazine and a movement, we are changing the news for good.

Good news about what is going right in the world is hard sell today.
But look at the trend lines; more than a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1990. We have dramatically reduced people dying of tuberculosis and malaria on all continents. Infant mortality is going down.

https://youtu.be/SQZ6JmpFrfs

Indonesia to provide 2.5m metric tons of #palm #oil to #Pakistan on urgent basis. First ship carrying 30,000 metric tons of oil from Indonesia left for Pakistan on Tuesday. #edibleoil #cookingoil #palmoil

ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) - Ten ships of edible oil will arrive in Pakistan in the next two weeks from Indonesia and Malaysia.

After successful negotiations of Pakistani delegation that visited Indonesia, it was agreed between the two countries that Indonesia will provide 2.5 million metric tons of edible oil to Pakistan on urgent basis.

According to a statement released today by Prime Minister’s Office, the delegation visited Indonesia on the directions of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Earlier, the Prime Minister talked to the Indonesian President Joko Widodo in this regard.

The first ship carrying 30,000 metric tons of edible oil from Indonesia will leave for Pakistan on Tuesday.

https://dunyanews.tv/en/Business/655987-Indonesia-provide-2-5m-metr...

Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR)

Country Name Per 100K Live Births
India 145.00
Timor-Leste 142.00
Pakistan 140.00

-------------------

Pakistan Maternal Mortality Rate 2000-2022

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/PAK/pakistan/maternal-mortali...

Maternal mortality ratio is the number of women who die from pregnancy-related causes while pregnant or within 42 days of pregnancy termination per 100,000 live births. The data are estimated with a regression model using information on the proportion of maternal deaths among non-AIDS deaths in women ages 15-49, fertility, birth attendants, and GDP.
Pakistan maternal mortality rate for 2017 was 140.00, a 2.1% decline from 2016.
Pakistan maternal mortality rate for 2016 was 143.00, a 7.14% decline from 2015.
Pakistan maternal mortality rate for 2015 was 154.00, a 4.35% decline from 2014.
Pakistan maternal mortality rate for 2014 was 161.00, a 3.01% decline from 2013.

The average expected years of schooling in Pakistan is 8.5 years. In comparison it is 11.2 years in Bangladesh and 12.3 years in India. Pakistan has performed poorly even on inequality adjusted human development, as well as gender development and equality compared with the regional countries.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1522407#:~:text=The%20average%20expected%....

What is the status of food security in Pakistan?

Pakistan is presently self-sufficient in major staples – ranked at 8th in producing wheat, 10th in rice, 5th in sugarcane, and 4th in milk production. Despite that, only 63.1 percent of the country's households are “food secure”, according to the Ministry of Health and Unicef's National Nutritional Survey 2018.

---------

More worryingly, almost half of the children under 5 years are stunted (low-height-for-age) and one in ten has been suffering from wasting (low-weight-forheight) in the country. Incorporating these factors, Pakistan was ranked 106th
among 119 countries surveyed for the Global Hunger Index, and has been
characterized as facing a “serious” level of hunger (Figure S2.2). In fact, Pakistan
is among those seven countries that cumulatively account for two-thirds of the world’s under-nourished population (along with Bangladesh, China, Congo,
Ethiopia, India and Indonesia)

https://www.sbp.org.pk/reports/quarterly/fy19/Third/Special-Section...

Senator Dr Sania Nishtar
@SaniaNishtar
Pakistan's first ever end-to-end digital targeted subsidies program #Ehsaas Rashan Riayat (implementation of which was underway) has been closed down, which means 20 million eligible families will not have access to 30% monthly subsidy on 3 grocery items. https://bit.ly/3zawG1M

https://twitter.com/SaniaNishtar/status/1548000577803563008?s=20&am...

Each year, Pakistan spends billions of rupees in untargeted federal and provincial subsidies across sectors. Much of these government transfers are subject to elite capture, subsidizing producers, corporations, and middlemen instead of reaching the poorest households.

Earlier this year, Ehsaas sought to address this issue by launching the first-of-its-kind, end-to-end-digitized targeted commodity subsidy programme, called Ehsaas Rashan Riayat. The programme established infrastructure to deliver government subsidies directly to millions of deserving households.

------------------

Unfortunately, the current government has decided to end the programme as of July 1, 2022, and instead committed Rs16 billion in untargeted subsidy to be disbursed through Utility Stores. Utility Stores are meant to provide subsidized ‘rashan’ without any digital targeting or verification. This will open avenues for collusion and elite capture. Given fiscal constraints and double-digit inflation, which is placing a disproportionate burden on the poor, I would urge the federal government to reconsider its decision and use the Ehsaas Rashan Riayat mechanism, instead.

Ehsaas Rashan Riayat was launched after extensive stakeholder consultations and has several features, which can be a gamechanger to target support to poor households while minimizing likelihood of corruption or elite capture. To make sure that public money is targeted, the programme created objective criteria for beneficiary eligibility, based on socioeconomic conditions drawing on data infrastructure of the 2021 National Socioeconomic Registry.

The backbone of the programme is the nationwide network of kiryana, Utility, and CSD stores, which were leveraged for disbursing the subsidy, instead of creating new distribution channels. Through an extensive process of engagement with merchant unions, visits to multiple cities, social mobilization, and grassroots awareness campaigns, the programme achieved a retail outlet footprint in 84 per cent of districts across Pakistan, to develop a network of 15,000+ merchants. This helped us reach the poorest families by mobilizing distribution channels wherever they lived. The plan was to reach more than 50,000 merchants by the end of the 2022 calendar year.

A key feature of the programme was to digitize the entire network of participating stores. These stores were linked in real-time through a mobile app of the National Bank of Pakistan, which was used to conduct subsidy transactions, with the subsidy given as a digital voucher. This programme enabled small, often informal kiryana stores to become more technologically savvy. Additionally, by connecting these merchants in an online database and geotagging them, the programme started digitally documenting a previously undocumented part of the economy.

The programme improved financial inclusion for thousands of unbanked small merchants by facilitating the opening of bank accounts. These merchants were reimbursed for the subsidy disbursed, in near real-time, through an entirely digital payment mechanism. These small merchants were to get access to banking services, including saving, transacting, and using other financial instruments, which could help further scale their businesses.

Senator Dr Sania Nishtar
@SaniaNishtar
Pakistan's first ever end-to-end digital targeted subsidies program #Ehsaas Rashan Riayat (implementation of which was underway) has been closed down, which means 20 million eligible families will not have access to 30% monthly subsidy on 3 grocery items. https://bit.ly/3zawG1M

https://twitter.com/SaniaNishtar/status/1548000577803563008?s=20&am...


Ehsaas Rashan Riayat was also meant to provide an ecosystem where cash recipients of Ehsaas benefits could potentially transition into digital payment practices, thus eliminating pilferage and interplay of extractive middlemen.

The underlying digital ecosystem that was set up as part of this programme was agile and had immense potential to be scaled even further. Initially, we used a demand-based model in which people had to SMS a request. The next model was based on pre-qualification of all the eligible beta families, developing pools of CNICs and corresponding registered SIMS for each eligible beta family, allowing any family member to visit their nearest merchant with their phone and CNIC to avail of the subsidy, without the need to register or wait weeks for verification. Just before I left office, I convened a steering committee meeting to approve detailed modalities of the new registration model.

If the programme is continued, its infrastructure could also be utilized to expand the range of subsidized commodities. Other household food essentials – beyond wheat, pulses, and cooking oil – could be added with minor backend changes in the program’s infrastructure. The monthly subsidy amount can be increased. The plan was to use the system beyond groceries, for subsidies on fuel and outpatient healthcare assistance, which is not covered by health insurance.

Our country faces economically challenging times, where drastic measures will be needed to address the far-reaching effects of the rising fiscal deficit. Ehsaas Rashan Riayat provides an opportunity for the government to take the lead in exercising fiscal prudence and to phase out untargeted subsidies, in favour of targeted support to households that need it most while at the same time address corruption.

The government must reconsider its decision and continue the operation and expansion of Ehsaas Rashan Riayat in the public interest.

India, Pakistan tackle backslide in child immunizations

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220727/India-Pakistan-tackle-ba...

While India and Pakistan topped the list of countries that saw the greatest increase in children not receiving a first dose of DTP between 2019 and 2020, they were also quick to bounce back.

Pakistan now figures among countries that successfully fought back declines to return to pre-pandemic levels of coverage "thanks to high-level government commitment and significant catch-up immunization efforts", UNICEF/WHO said.

In India, progress towards reducing the number of zero-dose children was impacted by the pandemic and the number of children who did not receive the first dose of the DTP vaccine was estimated to have increased to three million in 2020, up from 1.4 million in 2019, according to Mainak Chatterjee, health specialist at UNICEF India.

"Despite having the largest birth cohort in the world, India was able to prevent a further backslide through special drives such as the Intensified Mission Indradhanush, which enabled the country to bring down zero-dose to 2.7 million in 2021," Chatterjee told SciDev.Net.

#Pakistan managed to bounce back to its overall #child #vaccination rates in spite of disruptions due to the #COVID #pandemic. #health #immunization https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/pakistan-can-how-one-country-repa...

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1558266057206288384?s=20&...


“Pakistan can”: How one country repaired its routine immunisation safety net
As the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, Pakistan’s routine immunisation programme took a heavy hit. But while many countries continued to struggle to make up lost ground in 2021, Pakistan bounced back to pre-pandemic levels of protection. VaccinesWork spoke to country health leaders to find out what went right.

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/pakistan-can-how-one-country-repa...


New data confirms what public health officials hoped was true: in 2021, Pakistan’s children were very nearly as well-protected against preventable diseases as they had been in 2019. That may not sound like a landmark triumph, but it is – and here’s why.

Like in most countries, routine immunisation in Pakistan suffered a gut-punch – if not quite a knockout blow – when the pandemic landed in early 2020. Mario Jimenez, who has worked on Gavi’s Pakistan programme since 2019, says, “The lockdowns started, and that led to the immediate stop of outreach activities, and a subsequent accumulation of children that were not being reached with routine immunisation.”

Even once the lockdowns lifted, recalls Dr Faisal Sultan, former Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, fear of infection continued to inhibit contact between people and the health system. And even making it to the clinic didn’t always mean a child would get their jab: Pakistan struggled with periodic vaccine stock-outs as shipping and air travel stumbled to a halt globally.

“It really pushed the country and ourselves to reflect about how we can adapt to the situation, and what can be done to recover some of the losses that were taking place,” says Jimenez. These were urgent conversations: the real-world danger signalled by those losses was plain to everyone involved.

Pakistan has a massive birth cohort – more than 16,000 children are born each day. “In a matter of days,” Jimenez says, “we could have a very large number of unprotected unvaccinated children.” With the vaccine levee crumbling, every small disease outbreak risked becoming an epidemic flash-flood.

From July 2020, the health system kicked into high gear, beefing up outreach, and finding novel means to trace unvaccinated “zero-dose” children. Life-saving gains were made.

The headline multidimensional poverty (MPI) figures for Pakistan (0.198) are worse than for Bangladesh (0.104) and India (0.069). This is primarily due to the education deficit in Pakistan. UNDP's report titled "Unpacking Deprivation Bundle" shows that an average Pakistani still enjoys a better "standard of living" than his/her counterparts in Bangladesh and India. Below is an excerpt from it:

"The analysis first looks at the most common deprivation profiles across 111 developing countries (figure 1). The most common profile, affecting 3.9 percent of poor people, includes deprivations in exactly four indicators: nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and housing.7 More than 45.5 million poor people are deprived in only these four indicators.8 Of those people, 34.4 million live in India, 2.1 million in Bangladesh and 1.9 million in Pakistan—making this a predominantly South Asian profile "

https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/hdp-document/2022mpirep...


Also note in this UNDP report that the income poverty (people living on $1.90 or less per day) in Pakistan is 3.6% while it is 22.5% in India and 14.3% in Bangladesh.

Living standards (Cooking fuel Sanitation Drinking water Electricity Housing Assets) of the poor in Pakistan (31.1%) are better than in Bangladesh (45.1%) and India (38.5%).

Pakistan fares worse in terms of education (41.3%) indicators relative to Bangladesh (37.6%) and India (28.2%).

In terms of health, Pakistan ( 27.6%) fares better than India (32.2%) but worse than Bangladesh (17.3%).

In terms of population vulnerable to poverty, Pakistan (12.9%) does better than Bangladesh (18.2%) and India (18.7%)

Ahmed Jamal Pirzada
@ajpirzada
Doesn't look good for Pak: the human capital index has stayed flat since 2005. While "avg years of schooling" has increased from 4 years in 2000 to 6 years in 2015 (Barro-Lee dataset), the quality has not improved. Worse, the gap with regional countries has increased since 80s.

https://twitter.com/ajpirzada/status/1583239244168200193?s=20&t...

The HDI is a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. Pakistan's HDI value for 2021 is 0.544— which put the country in the Low human development category—positioning it at 161 out of 191 countries and territories.

Between 1990 and 2021, Pakistan's HDI value changed from 0.400 to 0.544, an change of 36.0 percent.

Between 1990 and 2021, Pakistan's life expectancy at birth changed by 6.0 years, mean years of schooling changed by 2.2 years and expected years of schooling changed by 4.0 years. Pakistan's GNI per capita changed by about 62.7 percent between 1990 and 2021.

https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/specific-country-data#/countries/PAK

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Pakistan has dropped seven places in the Human Development Index, ranking 161 out of 192 countries in the 2021-2022 HDI, according to the UNDP report released on Thursday.

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/989724-pakistan-down-on-human-deve...

In the previous year, Pakistan had stood at 154 out of 189 countries.

As per the report, Pakistan’s life expectancy at birth is 66.1 years and expected years of schooling are 8. The country’s gross per capita national income is $4,624. The report has identified that different climate shocks are affecting world order, pushing back the growth that was achieved in the past few years. While doing so, it has categorised the floods in Pakistan as “an example of the climate shocks seen around the world.”

Switzerland leads the way on the latest HDI while Norway and Iceland enjoy second and third positions. Among the nine South Asian countries -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Islamic Republic of Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka -- only Pakistan and Afghanistan (180th position) are in the low human development category.

Bhutan (127), Bangladesh (129), India (132) and Nepal (143) are in the medium human development category. And crisis-riddled Sri Lanka has managed to improve its position by 9 points, reaching the 73rd position on the index, finding itself in the high human development category. Iran is three positions behind at 76; the next is Maldives at the 90th position.

The report, titled ‘Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World’ has found out that around 90 per cent of countries have seen “reversals in human development” in the year of the survey, pointing to a world stuck in a never-ending cycle of crisis after crisis, causing global disruptions. Per the report, the two major factors responsible for these disruptions were the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Human Development Index is a measure of countries’ standard of living, health and education. This is the first time in the last 30 years that human development in a majority of countries has gone in reverse for two consecutive years.

This has pushed human development to its 2016 levels, a huge blow to the progress made on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were meant to be completed by 2030. For the year 2021, the UN had projected an HDI value of 0.75 -- the actual value has come out to be 0.732.

The report adds that the world is in a “new uncertainty complex”. Such uncertainty is created by the two years of Covid-19 which saw a series of the lethal waves of the virus.

Even though the world took quick steps to defeat the virus, the report notes, and developed vaccines to counter the threats, unequal distribution of the vaccines has created more problems in a number of low-income countries.

The pandemic-induced lockdowns and school closures also took a toll on people’s mental wellbeing across the world. The report has found out that mental distress among male minority groups in the UK saw the largest increase, and men from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan were the most affected by the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

INTERGENERATIONAL ECONOMIC MOBILITY: THE CASE OF NORTH-
WESTERN PAKISTAN
Ansa Javed Khan1, Sajjad Ahmad Jan2, Jawad Rahim Afridi3*, Arshia Hashmi4, Muhammad Azeem Ahmed5 1Assistant Director, P&D, Bacha Khan University, Charsadda, Pakistan; 2Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan; 3*Lecturer, Department of Economics, Sarhad University of Science & IT, Peshawar, Pakistan; 4Assistant Professor, The University of Faisalabad, Department of Management Studies, Faisalabad, Pakistan; 5Associate Professor, Barani Institute of Sciences, Pakistan.
Email: 1*director_pnd@bkuc.edu.pk, 2sajjadahmadjan@uop.edu.pk, 3*jrafridi67@gmail.com, 4arshia.hashim@tuf.edu.pk, 5azeem@baraniinstitute.edu.pk
Article History: Received on 19th June 2021, Revised on 26th June 2021, Published on 29th June 2021


https://www.sciencegate.app/document/10.18510/hssr.2021.93141


Access to Education and Intergenerational Economic Mobility
The following table 1 shows the change in educational status which has taken place between the parents and children’s generations for the overall sample as well as for the sub-groups (Majority and Minority Tribes). The absolute numbers (outside parentheses) and the percentage (within parentheses) in different cells of the table show the people who are illiterate or at different levels of education. The table on one hand shows the intergenerational mobility of people up and down the education ladder and on the other hand reveals the wide and persistent educational gap between the majority and minority tribes. The table shows that 26 % of the respondents in the kids’ generation do not have any education versus 46 % in the parents’ generation. The results affirm the government’s claims and the common perception that, on average, more people have become literate through time and therefore the people in the children’s generation are more likely to be educated than their parent's generation. Further, the college and university graduates in the children’s generation outnumber the school graduates while school graduates outnumber the higher two educational categories in the parents’ generation as most of the students in past used to drop out at both primary or high school levels and couldn’t manage to get into a college or university for higher studies.

The aggregate results for the whole sample are actually driven by the majority tribes as it shows identical trends from the parents’ generation to the children’s generation in all educational. The majority tribe has succeeded in decreasing the number of illiterates from 33% in the parents’ generation to 11% in the children’s generation. College and university graduates (total of 60%) outnumber the school graduates and the illiterate (total of 40%) in the children’s generation as compared to the parents’ generation in the majority tribe where the former is 26% and the latter is 73%. This indicates a visible upward movement of the educational ladder by the members of the majority tribe. The situation of education and literacy in the minority tribe is deplorable if the comparison is either made on basis of children’s and parents’ generations or if the educational attainment levels of the minority and majority tribes are compared. The illiterates outnumber all the other educational categories as in sharp contrast to the educational attainment levels of the majority tribe. The data further reveals that no or only a negligible improvement in the educational status of the people belonging to the minority tribe has taken place between the children’s and parents’ generations. This affirms our presumption that in the North-Western parts of Pakistan, the tribal affiliation of a person determines his or her access to education. The ease of access to education then further transforms into economic mobility or immobility of the people.

Pakistan Demographic Survey 2020


https://www.dawn.com/news/1721179


The latest figures showed that although the overall life expectancy has dropped, it rose among men from 64.3 to 64.5. For women, it fell from 66.5 to 65.5 but was still higher than for men.

Life expectancy also increased for the 1-4 age group to 71.3, including 70.6 for males and 72 for females.

The infant mortality rate has fallen to 56 deaths per 1,000 live births. It was 60 in PSLM 2018-19, and 62 in PDHS 2017-18.

While the general fertility rate was 124, the age-specific data shows the rate was highest in the 25-29 age group at 215, followed by 176 in the 20-24 age group, 164 in the 30-34 age group, and 94 in the 35-39 age group.

This last age group (35-39) also saw the most significant jump when compared with the PDHS figure of 79.

The general fertility rate was also quite higher in rural areas (138) compared to urban areas (102).

The PDS shows that the country’s population has reached from 207.6m in 2017 to 220.42m now, including 111.69m men and 108.73m women. Most people continue to live in rural areas (139.41m) compared to urban areas (81m).

https://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/population/publications/...

Bilal I Gilani
@bilalgilani
Continuing with looking at the brighter side of our development

Burden of disease has declined from 70,086 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)32 lost per 100,000
people in 1990 to 42,059 in 2019 due to decreases in CDs and improvements in maternal and
child health;

https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1610718511369797655?s=20&...

TFR Fertility Trend in Pakistan:


Past
Forecasted
1990 2017 2100
Pakistan
6.1 3.4 1.3
South Asia
6.1 3.4 1.3
Global
3.1 2.4 1.7


https://www.healthdata.org/pakistan

Lancet Study: Non-infectious diseases cause early death in Pakistan
BY MUNIR AHMED, ASSOCIATED PRESS - 01/19/23 4:04 AM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-health/ap-study-non-infectious-d...

Pakistan has considerable control over infectious diseases but now struggles against cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer as causes of early deaths, according to a new study published Thursday.

The Lancet Global Health, a prestigious British-based medical journal, reported that five non-communicable diseases — ischaemic heart disease, stroke, congenital defects, cirrhosis, and chronic kidney disease — were among the 10 leading causes of early deaths in the impoverished Islamic nation.

However, the journal said some of Pakistan’s work has resulted in an increase in life expectancy from 61.1 years to 65.9 over the past three decades. The change is due, it said, “to the reduction in communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases.” That’s still 7.6 years lower than the global average life expectancy, which increased over 30 years by 8% in women and 7% in men.

The study says “despite periods of political and economic turbulence since 1990, Pakistan has made positive strides in improving overall health outcomes at the population level and continues to seek innovative solutions to challenging health and health policy problems.”

The study, which was based on Pakistan’s health data from 1990 to 2019, has warned that non-communicable diseases will be the leading causes of death in Pakistan by 2040.

It said Pakistan will also continue to face infectious diseases.

“Pakistan urgently needs a single national nutrition policy, especially as climate change and the increased severity of drought, flood, and pestilence threatens food security,” said Dr. Zainab Samad, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Aga Khan University, one of the authors of the report.

“What these findings tell us is that Pakistan’s baseline before being hit by extreme flooding was already at some of the lowest levels around the globe,” said Dr. Ali Mokdad, Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at IHME. “Pakistan is in critical need of a more equitable investment in its health system and policy interventions to save lives and improve people’s health.”

The study said with a population approaching 225 million, “Pakistan is prone to the calamitous effects of climate change and natural disasters, including the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and catastrophic floods in 2010 and 2022, all of which have impacted major health policies and reform.”

It said the country’s major health challenges were compounded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and last summer’s devastating flooding that killed 1,739 people and affected 33 million.

Researchers ask Pakistan to “address the burden of infectious disease and curb rising rates of non-communicable diseases.” Such priorities, they wrote, will help Pakistan move toward universal health coverage.”

The journal, considered one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world, reported on Pakistan’s fragile healthcare system with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. The study was a collaboration with a Karachi-based prestigious Aga Khan University and Pakistan’s health ministry.

The study also mentioned increasing pollution as one of the leading contributors to the overall disease burden in recent years. Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore was in the grip of smog on Thursday, causing respiratory diseases and infection in the eyes. Usually in winter, a thick cloud of smog envelops Lahore, which in 2021 earned it the title of the world’s most polluted city.

Library thrives in Pakistan’s ‘wild west’ gun market town
‘Men look beautiful with jewel of knowledge, beauty lies not in arms but in education’

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/library-thrives-in-pakista...

DARRA ADAMKHEL, Pakistan: When the din of Pakistan’s most notorious weapons market becomes overwhelming, arms dealer Mohammad Jahanzeb slinks away from his stall, past colleagues test-firing machine guns, to read in the hush of the local library.

“It’s my hobby, my favourite hobby, so sometimes I sneak off,” the 28-year-old told AFP after showing off his inventory of vintage rifles, forged assault weapons and a menacing array of burnished flick-knives.

“I’ve always wished that we would have a library here, and my wish has come true.”

The town of Darra Adamkhel is part of the deeply conservative tribal belt where decades of militancy and drug-running in the surrounding mountains earned it a reputation as a “wild west” waypoint between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It has long been known for its black market bazaars stocked with forged American rifles, replica revolvers and rip-off AK-47s.


But a short walk away a town library is thriving by offering titles including Virginia Woolf’s classic “Mrs Dalloway”, instalments in the teenage vampire romance series “Twilight”, and “Life, Speeches and Letters” by Abraham Lincoln.

“Initially we were discouraged. People asked, ‘What is the use of books in a place like Darra Adamkhel? Who would ever read here?’” recalled 36-year-old founder Raj Mohammad.

“We now have more than 500 members.”

Tribal transformation
Literacy rates in the tribal areas, which were semi-autonomous until 2018 when they merged with the neighbouring province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are among the lowest in Pakistan as a result of poverty, patriarchal values, inter-clan conflicts and a lack of schools.


But attitudes are slowing changing, believes soft-spoken 33-year-old volunteer librarian Shafiullah Afridi: “Especially among the younger generation who are now interested in education instead of weapons.”

“When people see young people in their neighbourhood becoming doctors and engineers, others also start sending their children to school,” said Afridi, who has curated a ledger of 4,000 titles in three languages - English, Urdu and Pashto.

Despite the background noise of gunsmiths testing weapons and hammering bullets into dusty patches of earth nearby, the atmosphere is genteel as readers sip endless rounds of green tea while they muse over texts.

However, Afridi struggles to strictly enforce a “no weapons allowed” policy during his shift.

One young arms dealer saunters up to the pristinely painted salmon-coloured library, leaving his AK-47 at the door but keeping his sidearm strapped on his waist, and joins a gaggle of bookworms browsing the shelves.

Alongside tattered Tom Clancy, Stephen King and Michael Crichton paperbacks, there are more weighty tomes detailing the history of Pakistan and India and guides for civil service entrance exams, as well as a wide selection of Islamic teachings.

‘Education not arms’
Libraries are rare in Pakistan’s rural areas, and the few that exist in urban centres are often poorly stocked and infrequently used.

In Darra Adamkhel, it began as a solitary reading room in 2018 stocked with Mohammad’s personal collection, above one of the hundreds of gun shops in the central bazaar.

“You could say we planted the library on a pile of weapons,” said Mohammad - a prominent local academic, poet and teacher hailing from a long line of gunsmiths.

Library thrives in Pakistan’s ‘wild west’ gun market town
‘Men look beautiful with jewel of knowledge, beauty lies not in arms but in education’

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/library-thrives-in-pakista...


Mohammad paid 2,500 rupees ($11) for the monthly rent, but bibliophiles struggled to concentrate amidst the whirring of lathes and hammering of metal as bootleg armourers plied their trade downstairs.

The project swiftly outgrew the confines of a single room and was shifted a year later to a purpose-built single-storey building funded by the local community on donated land.

“There was once a time when our young men adorned themselves with weapons like a kind of jewellery,” said Irfanullah Khan, 65, patriarch of the family who gifted the plot.

“But men look beautiful with the jewel of knowledge, beauty lies not in arms but in education,” said Khan, who also donates his time alongside his son Afridi.

For the general public a library card costs Rs150 rupees ($0.66) a year, while students enjoy a discount rate of 100 rupees ($0.44), and youngsters flit in and out of the library even during school breaks.

One in 10 members are female - a figure remarkably high for the tribal areas - though once they reach their teenage years and are sequestered in the home male family members collect books on their behalf.

Nevertheless, on their mid-morning break schoolgirls Manahil Jahangir, nine, and Hareem Saeed, five, join the men towering over them as they pore over books.

“My mother’s dream is for me to become a doctor,” Saeed says shyly. “If I study here I can make her dream come true.”

Bearing gifts: the camels bringing books to Pakistan’s poorest children
The mobile library services are an education lifeline for students in Balochistan, where schools have closed during the pandemic

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/26/bearing-...


Sharatoon had wanted to continue her studies, but she had to leave school and her beloved books when she got married aged 15.

Now 27, Sharatoon is happy reading again, as every Friday a camel visits her small town, his saddle panniers full of books.

She has four children, the eldest is 11, the youngest 18 months, and she reads to them all, as well as to other children in the town.

Every week, when Roshan the camel comes to her home in Mand, about 12 miles from the border with Iran, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, Sharatoon exchanges the books she borrowed for new ones.

“When the camel came to our area for the first time, the kids were very happy and excited. Schools have long been closed in our area due to Covid and we do not have any libraries, so this was welcomed by all the kids,” says Sharatoon, who uses only one name.

Balochistan is Pakistan’s most impoverished province, blighted by a separatist insurgency for the past two decades. With a 24% female literacy rate, one of the lowest in the world, compared with a male literacy rate of 56%, it also has the highest percentage of children out of school in the country.


Roshan visits four villages, staying in each at the home of a “mobiliser” such as Sharatoon, where all the district children aged four to 16 can come to read, borrow and exchange books with one another.

“Parents and kids are excited. It is giving hope to many that they can read, and the staff members also work on mobilisation so more outreach can be done,” says Fazul Bashir, a coordinator for the library.

When Covid closed the schools across Balochistan, two women in Mand – Zubaida Jalal, a federal minister in the Pakistan government, and her sister Rahima Jalal, headteacher of a local high school – came up with the idea of a camel.

“Actually, the idea of using camels comes from Mongolia and Ethiopia,” says Rahima. “It suits our desolate, distant and rough terrains. We have received an enormous response that we were not expecting.”

The trial of the camel library has gone well and it is about to begin its next three months of rounds.

Sharatoon says: “Kids are eagerly waiting; they want to read books and keep asking me [about it]. There should be more science-related books so our kids can learn by experimentation.”


The Jalal sisters say there has been a lot of interest in the scheme from other areas, and they have just started a library in the city district of Gwadar, Balochistan, with a camel called Chirag.

Anas Syed Mohammad is a 10-year-old 4th-grade student in the town of Abdul Rahim Bazar, about 30 miles from the city of Gwadar.

Since the camel library started visiting three weeks ago, Mohammad has read a different book each time. “I loved reading Khazane Ki Talaash (In Search of Treasure). I discuss these books with my friends,” he says.

Bearing gifts: the camels bringing books to Pakistan’s poorest children
The mobile library services are an education lifeline for students in Balochistan, where schools have closed during the pandemic

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/26/bearing-...


Chirag visits five towns each week accompanied by his handler and Ismail Yaqoob, a volunteer and teacher. One day, when Yaqoob went to work in his school instead of the village, he got a call on his mobile from one of the children.

“He asked me why I had not come along with the camel. They were waiting for books,” says Yaqoob. “Children are so interested in reading and in their studies, but sadly the state does not invest in education.”

Jawad Ali, 10, who has ambitions to be a teacher, has also started borrowing books from the camel library. He says: “I am learning new things from these books and reading stories, understanding photo stories. But I want to read more books. The books are written in my native language – Balochi – but in English and Urdu as well. We want more books – and libraries and schools, too.”

Monthly December 2022
ECONOMIC UPDATE & OUTLOOK Pakistan

https://www.finance.gov.pk/economic/economic_update_December_2022.pdf

The government has decided to include
transgenders in the Benazir Kafalat
programme for the first time to mobilize
this marginalized community, so that the
maximum number of transgender
persons could benefit from this policy.
PPAF through its 24 Partner
Organizations has disbursed 41,369
interest free loans amounting to Rs 1.70
billion during the month of November,
2022. Since inception of interest free loan
component, a total of 2,142,190 interest
free loans amounting to Rs 78.54 billion
have been disbursed to the borrowers.
During January-November 2022 Bureau
of Emigration and Overseas Employment
has registered 762,767 emigrants and
71055 emigrants during November, 2022
for overseas employment in different
countries.

According to WHO, cases of malaria,
cholera, acute watery diarrheal diseases,
and dengue fever are declining in most of
the flood-affected districts. Overall,
malaria cases have reduced to around
50,000 from over 100,000 confirmed
cases in early October. Malaria cases
have declined by 25% in Balochistan, 58%
in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and 67% in
Sindh provinces. However, high malaria
and cholera cases are still being reported
in some pocket districts in Sindh and
Balochistan where standing water
remains. In November 2022, around 70
suspected cases of Diphtheria were
reported from the flood-affected
provinces of KP, Sindh, and Punjab.
There are about 1.6 million children with
Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) across
all the flood-affected districts who need
treatment with Ready to Use Therapeutic
Food (RUTF). About 400,000 of these
children are in the 34 Government High
Priority Districts (GHPD). Bridging the
nutrition budget gap for an aggressive
sector-wide response is therefore very
critical. (OCHA, Flood situation report on
Pakistan, December, 06, 2022).

Monthly December 2022
ECONOMIC UPDATE & OUTLOOK Pakistan

https://www.finance.gov.pk/economic/economic_update_December_2022.pdf


Real Sector:
For Rabi season 2022-23, wheat crop
has been sown on an area of 20.77
million acres . The input situation is 1
expected to remain favorable due to
incentives announced in Kissan Package
2022 that will boost agriculture
productivity. The better input situation is
expected to increase crops production in
Rabi season. According to IRSA the
irrigation water supply recorded at 6.32
MAF for November 2022 against the last
year's supply of 5.50 MAF, increased by
0.82 MAF.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) recorded
at 23.8 percent on a YoY basis in
November 2022 as compared to 26.6
percent in the previous month

Pakistan launches ‘School on Wheels’ project to improve education in rural areas

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistan-launches-school-o...

8 mobile classrooms will provide primary-level education and offer libraries and meals


Islamabad: Pakistan government launched the ‘School on Wheels’ project to being education to the doorstep of children whose parents are unable to send them to school.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launched the initiative on Tuesday and expressed hopes that the initiative would increase the literacy rate in Pakistan, particularly in rural areas. During the inauguration of mobile schools, PM Sharif said that the project aims to offer equal educational opportunities to children in rural areas who lacked the availability of modern educational facilities.

The prime minister also interacted with the schoolchildren at the launch ceremony. He urged the kids to utilise mobile libraries and hoped that it would promote a reading culture among the children. Education Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain briefed the prime minister on various features of the project. He said that in addition to mobile libraries, the project would also provide meals to the students enrolled in mobile classrooms, fostering a culture of reading and nourishment.

Eight mobile school buses
The bright-coloured buses were decorated with balloons and the windows were painted with alphabets and cartoons. The inside of the mobile classrooms is bright and clean, its interior filled with images of alphabets, numbers, days of the week, and pictures of fruit and animals. On the first day, children were seen sitting on colorful chairs inside the bus as a teacher used the interactive whiteboard for teaching.

Initially, the mobile school project consists of eight buses that will provide primary-level education to the children of Islamabad and nearby areas. Each bus is equipped with computers, desks, whiteboards, and LCDs. The government plans to increase the number of buses and expand the project to the rest of the country.

The ‘school on wheels’ project aims to bring education to the doorstep of disadvantaged children to give them a chance to learn. Several similar mobile school projects have been earlier introduced in Pakistan by public and private organisations.

The PIDE report further states that by breaking down the data further, it was discovered that approximately 1 in 4 (23.45 percent) children between the ages of 5–16 in Pakistan had never attended school whereas about 7 percent had enrolled and dropped out.

https://www.nation.com.pk/07-Mar-2022/22-8m-children-between-5-16-y...

Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children where an estimated 22.8 million children between 5 to 16 years of age are not attending school representing 44pc of the total population in this age group.

The proportion of children out-of-school between the ages 5-16 stood at a whopping 30pc nationwide in 2018-19, with Balochistan, the worst performing province, where 59pc approximately 2 out of 3 children are deprived of basic education, followed by Sindh with 42pc percent out of school Children, revealed in a recent research report of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) titled ‘Primary School Literacy: A Case Study Of The Educate A Child Initiative.’ In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the merged areas there are 31pc out of school children, the report added.

Pakistan is facing a serious challenge to ensure all children, particularly the most disadvantaged, attend, stay and learn in school. While enrolment and retention rates are improving, progress has been slow on improving educational indicators in Pakistan. According the report nearly 10.7 million boys and 8.6 million girls are enrolled at the primary level which drops to 3.6 million boys and 2.8 million girls at the lower secondary level.

The report states that according to the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM)’s survey conducted during 2018-19, approximately 51 percent of the population of Pakistan has successfully completed their primary level education which rose 2pc from 2013-14. Balochistan was the worst performing province in this regard, with figures actually declining from 33pc in 2013-14 to 31 percent in 2018-19–the COVID-19 pandemic has likely caused further damage.

Punjab, on the other hand, was the best performing province with a completion rate of just 57pc, approximately 3 out of 5. Assuming that education and literacy are public goods, these statistics indicate a looming crisis for Pakistan which has not managed to formulate a comprehensive strategy or framework around which children may become literate and empower themselves economically.

PIDE report says 59pc children in Balochistan deprived of basic education

The PIDE report further states that by breaking down the data further, it was discovered that approximately 1 in 4 (23.45 percent) children between the ages of 5–16 in Pakistan had never attended school whereas about 7 percent had enrolled and dropped out.

The situation in Balochistan and Sindh was the worst. In the former, about half of children in the same age bracket had never attended school (54.25pc) and in the latter, the figure stood at 35.44pc.

The report mentioned that alongside enrolment, there was a grave need to address the shortcomings of the system in place responsible for supporting and overseeing public schools.

These institutions have historically struggled to address problems such as teacher absenteeism, low enrolment, high dropout, and poor physical conditions. The reason for this is a lack of resources and underdeveloped monitoring/governance mechanisms—along with the absence of any substantial coordination mechanisms.

According to the PIDE’s report there is a need for the establishment of local, grassroots level entities that could act as intermediaries between targeted populations and the governing agencies.

The report emphasised that gaps in service provision at all education levels are a major constraint to education access.  Socio-cultural demand-side barriers combined with economic factors and supply-related issues (such as availability of school facilities), together hamper access and retention of certain marginalized groups, in particular adolescent girls. Putting in place a credible data system and monitoring measures to track retention and prevent drop-outs of out-of-school children is still a challenge.

At the systems level, inadequate financing, limited enforcement of policy commitments, and challenges inequitable implementation impede reaching the most disadvantaged. An encouraging increase in education budgets has been observed at 2.8pc of the total GDP, it is still well short of the 4pc target, the report added.

Primary School Literacy: A Case Study of the Educate a Child Initiative
Abbas Moosvi, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad.

https://pide.org.pk/research/primary-school-literacy-a-case-study-o...

INTRODUCTION
According to the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement survey of 2018-19, approximately 51 percent of the population of Pakistan has successfully completed their primary level education – a figure that rose 2 percent from 2013-14. Balochistan was the worst performing province in this regard, with figures actually declining from 33 percent in 2013-14 to 31 percent in 2018-19—and the COVID-19 pandemic has likely caused further damage. Punjab, on the other hand, was the best performing, with a completion rate of just 57 percent—approximately 3 out of 5. Assuming that education and literacy are public goods, these statistics indicate a looming crisis for Pakistan: which has not managed to formulate a comprehensive strategy or framework around which children may become literate and empower themselves economically.

OUT-OF-SCHOOL CHILDREN: A CRISIS OF POLICY
The proportion of children out-of-school between the ages 5-16 stood at a whopping 30 percent nationwide in 2018-19. In Balochistan, the worst performing province, the figure stood at 59 percent during the same period: approximately 3 out of 2 children deprived of basic education. In Sindh, the rate was 42 percent—alarming for the province generating the highest tax revenues in the country, largely from the economic capital: Karachi.

Breaking down the data further, it was discovered that approximately 1 in 4 (23.45 percent) children between the ages of 5–16 in Pakistan had never attended school—whereas about 7 percent had enrolled and dropped out. The situation in Balochistan and Sindh was the worst. In the former, about half of children in the same age bracket had never attended school (54.25 percent) and in the latter the figure stood at 35.44 percent.

How Maqsad’s Mobile Education Can Help More Pakistani Students Learn

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidprosser/2023/03/16/how-maqsads-mo...

Maqsad aims to make education more accessible to 100 million Pakistani students through a learning platform delivered via a mobile app. The platform offers teaching and testing, and can respond to queries. It seeks to disrupt the country’s out-of-school education sector, which largely consists of expensive tuition services that most families can’t afford.

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Growing up in Pakistan, high-school friends Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, the founders of edtech start-up Maqsad, were very conscious of their good fortune. Aziz struggled with dyslexia but his parents were able to afford after-school academic support that enabled him to complete his education. Ahmed, meanwhile, benefited from a series of academic scholarships that gave him a headstart in life.

Fast forward to the Covid-19 pandemic, Aziz and Ahmed were both working in London, and watched with horror as Pakistan tried to move to online learning, but found itself unable to scale up a technology platform capable of supporting large numbers of students. The crisis acted as an impetus to launch Maqsad, which is today announcing a $2.8 million funding round as it reaches 1 million users only six months after its launch.

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“Maqsad offers an exceptional after-school learning experience for students at a fraction of the cost of existing alternatives,” Ahmed explains. “Our focus on student problems is at the core of our mission, and we’ve collected feedback from over 20,000 students and teachers across Pakistan to ensure learning outcomes are being achieved.”

Certainly, the company has grown remarkably quickly. Since its launch last year, the Maqsad app has been downloaded more than 1 million times and is consistently ranked as the number one education app in Pakistan on the Google Play Store. The app provides access to high-quality content developed by experienced teachers, but also uses artificial intelligence tools to offer personalised learning.

Aimed initially at students aged 15 to 19 – often preparing for board or university entrance exams – the platform aims to have real impact in a market where student-teacher ratios, at 44:1, are among the highest in the world. Maqsad – the name is the Urdu word for “purpose” – offers a freemium model, enabling students to access a range of features and services at little or no cost. Over time, it plans to offer more content aimed at younger students.

From an investment perspective, the business offers exposure to an education market that is worth $37 billion in Pakistan. While other technology-enabled providers are also targeting the market – including Abwaab and Nearpeer – Maqsad regards its primary competitors as the providers of physical tuition centres. These are unaffordable for many students, it points out, or simply inaccessible for those who do not live in urban locations where such centres are located.

PM launches ‘Teleschool Pakistan’ for free online education

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2407321/pm-launches-teleschool-pakista...

Teleschool Pakistan is a mobile application developed by the Ministry of Federal Education to provide free online education to students of all grades.

Addressing the ceremony, the prime minister observed that teachers’ training in the country was not up to the mark which was unfortunate and cited his experience in Punjab province.

He said that he had directed for steps to improve the quality of about 40 training centres in the province during his tenure as the chief minister.


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Secretary for Federal Education and Professional Training Waseem Ajmal presented an overview of the initiative.

He said digital contents would be created and made available on different medium. A total of six digital channels were being launched for different ages.

He said after the Covid pandemic, 6,000 quality videos were prepared.

Teachers would also be properly trained under the professional development initiative, he added.

Under the initiative, 150 chrome books were being distributed among the students while another 6,000 chrome books would be distributed soon, he added.

Purpose driven life: How top London school graduates quit lucrative jobs to provide millions of Pakistani students a lifeline | Pakistan – Gulf News

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/purpose-driven-life-how-to...

Islamabad: As the once-in-a-century pandemic brought unprecedented changes to the world of education, two Pakistani entrepreneurs, Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, found their purpose and built an edtech (educational technology) platform called Maqsad, which is the Urdu word for “purpose”.

Ahmed and Aziz, graduates of the London School of Economics, left their jobs in strategy consulting and investment banking in London and returned to Karachi to pursue their shared aspiration of making a meaningful impact back in Pakistan.

Being aware of the challenges of the Pakistani education system, the two childhood friends seized the opportunity during the pandemic disruption and founded Maqsad in 2021 with a mission to provide a lifeline for millions of students and allow them to access educational resources from their homes.

Within the last six months, the Maqsad app reached 1 million, has answered 4 million queries, and continues to be ranked as the top education app in Pakistan on the Google app store. But that is only the beginning. Maqsad aims to make education more accessible to 100 million Pakistani students through its mobile-only learning platform.

Features of learning platform
“Maqsad is a very comprehensive learning platform that does three things for students: Explain concepts, test knowledge and answer queries,” the co-founder Rooshan Aziz explained to Gulf News. The app provides comprehensive after-school academic content in both English and Urdu.

It offers teaching, testing, and query resolution for grades 9-12 students, focusing on the content of local educational boards - Sindh, Punjab, and Federal boards currently but aims to expand its reach to more boards and grades in the future.

The app’s query-solving technology and interactive testing provide a valuable solution for students who lack access to quality instructors. With the app’s enhanced assessment feature, students can confidently self-evaluate, resulting in a consistent month-on-month growth of 150 per cent in the number of questions attempted by students, Aziz shared.

Personalised after-school academic support
The mobile app is emerging as a potential solution to help reduce reliance on private tuition in Pakistan. Many students, including those studying in private schools, often turn to private tuition to provide individualised attention and support to help them keep up with the curriculum.

The Maqsad co-founders understand these challenges very well. Aziz struggled with dyslexia (learning disability) and largely depended on after-school academic support to complete his education. When he grew up, Aziz realised that this support was largely out of reach for the majority of students in Pakistan. Ahmed, who comes from a middle-class background, recalled that his family dedicated over half of the family’s income towards education, and securing scholarships helped alter the course of his life.

Purpose driven life: How top London school graduates quit lucrative jobs to provide millions of Pakistani students a lifeline | Pakistan – Gulf News

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/purpose-driven-life-how-to...


“Maqsad serves as a substitute for offline tuition, which may be inaccessible or unaffordable for many families. This is a major concern for girls who face accessibility issues due to limited public transport infrastructure and reliance on other family members,” said the Maqsad co-founder Ahmed. Another goal of the platform is to address Pakistan’s unequal education landscape, where poor education standards prevail for a large number of students, he says.

‘Game-changer’ for students
Maqsad app has been hailed as a “game-changer” for students who struggle to receive personalised support due to the country’s highest student-teacher ratios in the world with only 1 teacher for every 44 students. Ahmed emphasises that “focus on student problems is at the core of our mission, and we have collected feedback from over 20,000 students and teachers across Pakistan to ensure learning outcomes are being achieved”.



The app has been particularly beneficial for female students allowing them to receive the support they need to excel academically. A ninth-grade female student, who recently scored an impressive 73 out of 75 in Maths, attributed her success to the personalised support at Maqsad available free of cost.

Medical student Nimra Khan (student’s name changed upon request) said she used the app to prepare for college admission test and was able to join her dream university “thanks to high-quality services by Maqsad, which were provided for free, unlike other learning applications that charged significant amounts of money.” The app provides free access to the majority of the lessons but there are also paid options for advanced content at a fraction of the price of comparable alternatives.



Many teachers are also reportedly using the app as a source of knowledge and to offer after-school support who don’t have direct access to the app or Internet.

Maqsad secures $2.8 million in seed funding
The leading edtech, Maqsad, recently raised $2.8 million in a seed funding round led by Speedinvest, one of Europe’s largest seed investors, and returning investor Indus Valley Capital. Philip Specht, a partner at Speedinvest, said the firm invested because of Maqsad’s “potential to disrupt the education ecosystem and touch the lives of millions of students”. They believe that Maqsad is “on track to be one of the most successful businesses in Pakistan.



Indus Valley Capital, a Pakistan-focused early-stage venture capital fund, has increased its investment in Maqsad due to its compelling vision for education in Pakistan. This investment has raised Maqsad’s total capital to $4.9 million, solidifying its position as the best-funded edtech platform in Pakistan.

Future goals
The Maqsad team will use funding “to invest in more content for younger classes and cutting-edge technologies to make learning more personalised” and introduce AI-based solutions to enhance the platform’s capabilities and expand the subject offerings. “We are laser-focused on delivering a personalised learning experience at scale and have a number of exciting AI-based initiatives in the pipeline,” he said.



The edtech startup is also exploring potential partnerships with schools and is currently running a pilot with one of the largest school networks in the country. Sharing the long-term vision, Aziz said Maqsad aims to transform the country’s education ecosystem with content and technology solutions that are not limited by constraints such as financial issues or unavailability of teachers in rural regions.

Education Technology in Pakistan | EdTech Hub

https://edtechhub.org/where-we-work/pakistan/

EdTech Hub develops and delivers evidence in EdTech. We work in partnership with researchers and stakeholders in-country to find specific, effective solutions to education challenges.

Since 2020, EdTech Hub has been assisting many players in Pakistan’s education sector. Because the education sector in Pakistan is very decentralised, EdTech Hub’s work requires close collaboration with the Government at the federal and provincial levels, as well as local partners, EdTech entrepreneurs and policy think tanks.

More specifically, EdTech Hub works with the Pakistani Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFEPT), the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), the FCDO, World Bank, and UNICEF to achieve large-scale impact.

A mobile library reaching children in remote villages of Pakistan
The camel library is a unique project to improve access to literacy

https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/pakistan-library-came...

There is something special about the library in Tharparkar, one of the most deprived areas of the southeastern province of Sindh in Pakistan.

This mobile library was started almost two years ago in the village of Dhano Dodandal in the district of Tharparkar. It involves loading books onto a camel, which is then taken from village to village. Recently, the project has expanded to the another village, Sokliyo.


Mehdi Raza, who supervises this project in the area of Nagarparkar, says that Dr Asghar Naqvi of Karachi put him in touch with the educational NGO Alif Laila – who provided the team with books for children.

The camel library facilitates learning for children from village to village, without the need for hefty investment. Children not only read the books themselves but also take them to the adults in their homes, which furthers spreads awareness.

Children in the small village school look forward to the two days of the week when books are brought to them by the camel library.

Teacher Badal tells Independent Urdu he is happy that his students can access books in this novel way – and that the library is a helpful resource in their learning.

Pana Bhai, who is fond of reading, says she comes with the children of her village as soon as the camel library arrives.

Mehdi Raza explains that this service was started with just a single camel, but in the future it is hoped the project will be able expand further using more camels.

Camelback counters trek wilderness for Pakistan (first digital) census

https://www.dawn.com/news/1745167

“We even have to live for days out in the mountains among the people we're counting," says census supervisor.

Plodding over the horizon of Balochistan, camel-riding officials spy on a far-flung cluster of rough wooden homes and start tallying its tribespeople as the national census gets underway.

Beyond the reach of roads, power lines and TV signals in central Balochistan, this arid settlement of five reed huts has no name and hosts barely 15 nomads — three families herding goats and sheep.

“We ride for hours,” said local census supervisor Faraz Ahmad. “We even have to live for days out in the mountains among the people we’re counting.”

In cities and towns, teams wend their way from door to door on motorbikes. But in rural Balochistan, the tarmac gives way to craggy trails that then dissolve altogether in a wilderness of khaki rockland.

A fleet of gurning camels is the only option to get the job done.

“It takes a while to convince them to share their details,” census taker Mohammad Junaid Marri told AFP in Kohlu district, 210 kilometres east of Quetta and one hour by camel from the nearest discernible road.

“In some cases, it’s kind of funny. Since every census team has a security escort, sometimes people run away,” the 30-year-old said after his garlanded camel Bhoora bowed to let him slide off its hump and start peppering families with questions.

Between five and 10 per cent of Kohlu residents live in areas so inaccessible that camels are the only practical transport, estimates 34-year-old Ahmad.

They are rented for 1,000 rupees a day and the price includes a cameleer — a man trudging ahead to lead the bristly beasts on a leash.

In a nation divided along ethnic lines, enumerating citizens — 207 million at last count and an estimated 220m today — is a politically charged act that can alter claims to power and scant state resources.

The data will also be used to outline constituencies in future elections. Balochistan — Pakistan’s largest and least populous province — is rich in natural resources but poor by all other measures.

A separatist insurgency has long simmered in the region, fuelled by the grievance that Islamabad has failed to share the spoils of wealth extracted from Balochistan.

As Marri and Ahmad approach the hamlet on one camel — trailed by another carrying a guard wielding a weathered machine gun — they are eyed by a teenager through a pair of binoculars as children in traditional red floral dresses gather around.

“There’s a lack of awareness among people about the census — they don’t understand the benefits and downsides,” said Ahmad. “They don’t trust us and fear we may cheat them.”

Elsewhere, police guarding census teams in the nation’s remote and restive northwest have been killed by the Taliban.

Despite the decidedly low-tech mode of transport, this is the first time Pakistan’s census will be compiled digitally — on tablets rather than reams of paper. Nonetheless, the old grievances remain.

“What benefits will we get from the census?” asked Mir Khan, 53, in another nearby speck of a settlement at the foot of mountains.

“We will get nothing. The influential people snatch everything the government wants to distribute to the poor.”

“We have never seen any support from the government,” grumbles his cousin Pando Khan, 58. “We see people when they’re campaigning for us to vote for them, and later they never return.”

However, after swapping their personal details with families according to local tribal customs, Ahmad and Marri convince them to answer 25 questions to give them a clearer picture of present-day Pakistan.

Pakistan: Technology boosts education reform in remote areas

https://www.globalpartnership.org/results/stories-of-change/pakista...

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Education in Pakistan’s Balochistan and Sindh provinces has been hampered by natural disasters, poor infrastructure and remoteness, and further exacerbated by political, economic and security problems.
From WhatsApp groups to biometric fingerprint systems, innovative technology has helped with building and restoring schools and improving teacher retention in these remote regions.
Since 2014, GPE’s support has led to 53,000 previously out-of-school children enrolled in school in Balochistan, and the tracking of educational data in all 29 districts in Sindh.

Supported by a US$34 million GPE grant, the government of Balochistan set up digital profiles to record land transfers and follow school construction, supporting the completion of schools and allowing education officials to track progress.

Large-scale surveys gathered geospatial data, an innovative and cost-effective way to identify abandoned buildings that could be transformed into schools.

Balochistan also established criteria for the selection of school sites, ensuring no other school existed within a 1.5 km radius and that locations enabled at least 20 out-of-school children to attend. This resulted in schools being built in remote areas with the most need.


Since 2015, 700 schools with new or renovated buildings have been completed and more than 100 girls’ primary schools upgraded to secondary. With GPE support, education authorities began to track real-time data in 14,000 schools, including teacher attendance and enrollment.

This has helped with the allocation of funding to locations with the greatest need. Android apps also record the physical infrastructure of schools, providing timely information on the functionality of toilets, drinking water and electricity.

School monitoring using technology
Both provinces use tech solutions to support management and ensure accountability in the education system. In Balochistan, apps keep track of teacher attendance, recording when teachers are within a certain geo-radius of the school; they work offline in more remote areas, uploading information when there is network access.

Through a US$66 million GPE grant, the Sindh province used tech tools to ensure teachers were deployed to the areas where they were most needed. Fingerprint-based biometric and photograph systems supported by GPS coordinates are also able to track teaching hours.

Greater incentive and validation for teachers
In a significant boost to quality learning, GPE supported the recruitment and training of qualified teachers, with emphasis placed on hiring female teachers to increase girls’ enrollment. Since 2015, 1,200 teachers have been recruited in Balochistan after passing the national testing service exam.

Better teaching and consistently open schools have helped increase student enrollment, with over 56,000 more girls enrolling in public elementary, primary and middle schools in Sindh.

Meet Ayesha Siddiqui, a TCF Alumna studying at the prestigious Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)!

Despite cultural barriers and opposition from the community in her village (Bhai Pheru, Punjab), her father, a daily wage laborer and her mother, a house help, stood by her side and encouraged her to pursue her dreams!


https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:70531400607323...

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Meet Ayesha Siddiqui, a TCF Alumna studying at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)! Ayesha's journey from Bhai Pheru Village to LUMS was anything but easy. But despite cultural barriers and opposition from her community, her father, a daily wager and her mother, a house help, stood by her side and encouraged her to pursue her dreams!

https://business.facebook.com/citizensfoundationcanada/photos/a.375...

In Pakistan, Quality Education Requires A Different Approach—and More Investment
JUAN BARON MAY BEND

https://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/pakistan-quality-...


Our recent Human Capital Review highlights that quality education for all children in Pakistan will require a different approach and substantial financial efforts, estimated to be 5.4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Low public spending on education, combined with limited effectiveness at producing positive student outcomes, such as universal school enrollments and effective learning, limits Pakistan’s citizens from more actively participating in economic and social activities and contributing to productivity and economic growth. The challenges –notably the large number of out-of-school children and high learning poverty–seem complex the costs of addressing them unsurmountable. Nevertheless, there are actions Pakistan can take to change this trajectory.

Pakistan’s education sector faces critical challenges, which are believed to have been deepened by COVID-19 and the 2022 Floods. These catastrophes have only added to the world’s second-highest population of out-of-school children, which was at 20.3 million before them. Even before the pandemic, Pakistan had 75% Learning Poverty, which means that prior to the floods it started with already a very high percentage of 10-year-olds that cannot read and understand a simple age-appropriate text. The most vulnerable are disproportionately affected by the sector’s challenges. For example, learning poverty is highest for the poorest, and the most impoverished children – mainly in rural areas – are more likely to be out of school.

A different approach would require using available information to better target education programs in order to maximize the impact of limited resources.

For example, conversations and analyses tend to group all out-of-school children into a single category. This severely limits the effectiveness of policy actions to reduce out-of-school children. Understanding the different characteristics of out-of-school children will help, and here are some of them:

The majority are girls. Before the pandemic, 37 percent of girls and 27 percent of boys aged 5–16 were not in school.
They are more likely to live in rural areas. About 35 percent—or 15 million-- rural children aged 5 to 16 were out of school, compared with 20 percent –or 4.4 million--of urban children. This gap has remained constant over the past two decades.
They tend to be older. More children are out after primary school. During the 2018/19 school year, 40 percent of secondary school-age children were out of school (40 compared to 25 percent of middle school-age children and 23 percent of primary school–age children.
The number and share of out-of-school children drastically differs across provinces. About 53 percent of all out-of-school children live in Punjab and 23 percent in Sindh. That is almost 14 million. However, Balochistan and Sindh show the country's highest provincial rates of out-of-school children.

In Pakistan, Quality Education Requires A Different Approach—and More Investment
JUAN BARON MAY BEND

https://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/pakistan-quality-...


A different approach not only targets out-of-school children more effectively, but also calls for a relentless focus on learning in everything the education sector does. The statistics in Pakistan are telling: 65 percent of students still need to achieve a minimum proficiency level in reading by the end of primary education (Learning Poverty Brief).

There are several barriers to learning. Research points to outdated teaching practices, lack of quality and availability of pedagogical material, difficulty transitioning from languages spoken at home to the language used in schools, and teacher shortages. In addition, poverty, undernutrition, lack of school readiness, and distance to school make learning more challenging for students.

A different approach and implementing programs for impact would require at least three elements. First, it requires policies and solutions tailored to the characteristics of distinct groups of out-of-school children to maximize impact. For example, bringing children who are in the 13-16 age range and who have never been in school to regular school does not answer their needs. Alternatively, providing these children with literacy, numeracy, and life skills would support their needs in life.

Second, it requires focusing on what works. There is plenty of evidence from Pakistan and elsewhere that highlight the policy options and programs that are the most cost-effective to increase enrollment and learning, but prioritizing which ones to implement is critical. Third, it will require increasing the efficiency and level of public expenditure, this can be achieved by targeting funding every year to where education outcomes are the lowest.

There are several tested and impactful approaches that Pakistan has used successfully and that can deliver results at a reasonable cost. These can be scaled to expand educational services for children in Pakistan.

A few examples here can have a real impact. First, public-private partnerships have worked in Punjab. They can be expanded to cover more children in other levels of the system, particularly middle school, but be better regulated. Second, public and community schools can be revamped and improved, ensuring teachers are present – including consideration of double shifts when appropriate in the public sector. Third, multigrade classrooms should take true multigrade approaches in terms of funding, planning, and pedagogical execution. Making multigrade more effective is necessary to make rural education affordable and impactful. Several countries have done it successfully, including Pakistan, in the past.

Finally, the Human Capital Review provides a back-of-the-envelope estimate of how much Pakistan would require to keep all children in school – with gains in quality: 5.4 percent of GDP. This is assuming increases in efficiency in the public sector of 20 percent, for example, by using more targeted programs, investing in cost-efficient programs, and minimizing the use of high-cost, low-impact programs such as laptop distribution with no underlying pedagogical strategy.

An increase in expenditure is necessary from the low base of 2.5 percent of GDP Pakistan currently spends on education. Expanding levels of education should go in parallel with a serious effort to increase the efficiency of public expenditure in access, quality, and equity. Just bringing children to school is not enough. They must learn the skills to contribute to their own lives, families, communities, and country.

Global Social Mobility Index 2020 | World Economic Forum

The Global Social
Mobility Report 2020
Equality, Opportunity
and a New Economic
Imperative

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report.pdf

The World Economic Forum’s Global Social Mobility Index provides a new, holistic assessment of 82 global economies according to their performance on five key dimensions of social mobility distributed over 10 pillars: 1. Health; 2. Education (access, quality and equity, lifelong learning); 3. Technology; 4. Work (opportunities, wages, conditions); 5. Protection and Institutions (social protection and inclusive institutions). Economies with greater social mobility provide more equally shared opportunities—namely, an equal and meritocratic footing irrespective of socio-economic background, geographic location, gender or origin. There is a direct and linear relationship between a country’s income inequality and its social mobility score on the index. Low social mobility entrenches historical inequalities and higher income inequalities fuel lower social mobility. Enhancing social mobility can convert this vicious cycle into a virtuous one and has positive benefits on broader economic growth. The Global Social Mobility Index equips policy-makers with a tool to identify areas for improving social mobility and promoting equally shared opportunities for the entirety of their citizens, regardless of their development stage. The index is supplemented by a deep dive into the situation in the United States, through innovative metrics developed in partnership between the World Economic Forum and three private sector companies which hold unique data sets and provide new insights into the distribution of advantages and disadvantages across the population.

62 Tunisia 51.7
63 Panama 51.4
64 Turkey 51.3
65 Colombia 50.3
66 Peru 49.9
67 Indonesia 49.3 68
El Salvador 47.4
69 Paraguay 46.8
70 Ghana 45.5
71 Egypt 44.8
72 Lao PDR 43.8
74 Morocco 43.7
73 Honduras 43.5
75 Guatemala 43.5
76 India 42.7
77 South Africa 41.4
78 Bangladesh 40.2
79 Pakistan 36.7
81 Cameroon 36.0
80 Senegal 36.0
82 Côte d'Ivoire 34.5

No School Stands Alone
How market dynamics affect the performance of public and private schools

https://www.educationnext.org/no-school-stands-alone-how-market-dyn...

Jishnu Das


In the United States, 9 percent of K–12 students attend private schools, but in low- and middle-income countries, private schools account for 20 percent of all primary enrollment and are rapidly gaining ground. In Pakistan, the number of private schools rose to more than 70,000 by 2015, up from 3,000 in 1982; by 2015, these schools educated 34 percent of Pakistani children enrolled in primary schools. In contrast to private schools in the United States, Pakistan’s are highly affordable, and the majority are secular.


This growth in private schooling comes at a unique moment in global education: low-income countries have managed to substantially increase enrollments at all levels of schooling, but they have yet to improve what children learn. For instance, the unprecedented speed at which primary (and now secondary and college) enrollment has risen in low-income countries dwarfs the historical experience of today’s rich countries. Yet, in countries such as India and Pakistan, when children are tested at the end of 3rd grade, one-third of them cannot subtract two-digit numbers, less than a sixth can read a simple sentence in English, and less than half can read a simple sentence in the vernacular language, Urdu. Across low-income countries, test scores are so low that the situation has been dubbed a global learning crisis by organizations such as the World Bank and UNESCO.

The growth in private schools, coming at the same time as the shift in focus from enrollment to learning, has polarized the education community in low- and middle-income countries. Some people favor heavily regulating or even shutting down private schools, based on the belief that they provide substandard education to children of parents who are unable to assess the quality of schools; others believe that private schools should be encouraged and indeed subsidized through the public purse because they provide a valuable option in places with failing public schools. Missing from this debate is a detailed empirical picture of what the growth of private schools means for education markets more broadly. How does the rise in private schooling affect demand for schools in both the private and public sectors, and how do schools respond to any changing demand? Does more competition increase quality? Should governments maintain their focus on improving the quality of public schools, alleviate constraints on private alternatives—or perhaps do both?

Learning from the LEAPS Project

Research from the Learning and Education Achievement in Pakistan Schools project, or LEAPS, sheds light on these questions and holds implications for public policy in Pakistan and around the globe. To understand how the growth of private schools was transforming the education landscape in low-income countries, in 2003 I teamed up with Tahir Andrabi of Pomona College and Asim Ijaz Khwaja of Harvard University to launch the LEAPS project, a study of all the schools in 112 villages in the province of Punjab. The province has more than 100,000 schools, of which 60,000 were private in 2015. (By comparison, the state of California, with the largest public-education system in the United States, has about 10,000 public schools.) The villages in the LEAPS project were selected from those that had at least one private school in 2003; these villages are larger and somewhat wealthier than the average village in Punjab, which in turn has the lowest poverty rate of all Pakistani provinces. At the time the project began, about 60 percent to 70 percent of the province’s rural population lived in villages with at least one private school. Between 2003 and 2011, the LEAPS team tracked more than 800 schools in these villages, interviewed more than 1,000 principals and 2,000 teachers, and tested more than 70,000 children to gauge their foundational skills in literacy and numeracy.

https://www.educationnext.org/no-school-stands-alone-how-market-dyn...

Jishnu Das


The high concentration of private and public schools in Punjab Province has transformed education markets there. Figure 1 shows a village in the LEAPS sample. It took me (and two young children) 15 minutes to traverse the village, yet it has five private and two public schools. Data gathered by the LEAPS team show that in 2003, the average fee for private schools in rural Punjab was equivalent to about $1.50 a month, or less than the price of a cup of tea every day. The number of schools in the village portrayed here is typical of the sample—in fact, the average LEAPS village in 2003 had 678 households and 8.2 schools, of which 3 were private.

The proliferation of private schools in Punjab has enabled such considerable school choice that, once we account for urban areas, some 90 percent of children in the province now live in neighborhoods and villages like the one illustrated in Figure 1. Such “schooling markets” are not just a Pakistani or South Asian phenomenon. Schooling environments in Latin America and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa also offer extensive variety for local families.

One question widely examined by education researchers is whether children in private schools learn more than those in public schools. Is there a private-school “premium” that can be measured in terms of test results or other metrics? One impediment to answering that question is that children enrolled in private schools are not randomly drawn from the local population, and researchers often cannot convincingly correct for this selection problem. In my view, though, a larger obstacle is that the concept of an “average” private-school premium is elusive when families can choose from multiple public and private schools and the quality of schools differs vastly within both sectors. Comparing a high-performing public school to a low-performing private school will yield a very different result than comparing a high-performing private school to a low-performing public school.

The LEAPS research team looked at this question in a study published in 2023. We defined school value-added as the gain in test scores in Urdu, math, and English that a randomly selected child would experience when enrolled in a specific school. The team found that the value-added variation among schools was so large that, compounded over the primary school years, the average difference between the best- and the worst-performing school in the same village was comparable to the difference in test scores between low- and high-income countries.

Figure 2 shows what this variation implies for estimates of private-school effectiveness. Each vertical line in the figure represents one of the 112 LEAPS villages. Schools in each village are arranged on the line according to their school value-added, with public schools indicated by red triangles and private schools by black dots. The red band tracks the average quality of public schools in the villages, from weakest to strongest, and the gray band shows the average quality of private schools in the villages. The private schools are, on average, more successful in raising test scores than their public-sector counterparts. As is clear, however, every village has private and public schools of varying quality, and the measure of any “private-school premium” depends entirely on which specific schools are being compared. In fact, the study shows that the causal impact of private schooling on annual test scores can range from –0.08 to +0.39 standard deviations. The low end of this range represents the average loss across all villages when children move from the best-performing public school to the worst-performing private school in the same village. The upper end represents the average gain across all villages when children move from the worst-performing public school to the best-performing private school, again within the same village.

https://www.educationnext.org/no-school-stands-alone-how-market-dyn...

Jishnu Das

Parents’ Choices

The relevant question, then, is not whether private schools are more effective. The questions are: How well are parents equipped to discern quality in a school—public or private—and choose the best one for their children? And can policy decisions affect these choices?

As to the first question, the team found that parents choosing private schools appear to recognize and reward high quality. Consequently, in the LEAPS villages, private schools with higher value-added are able to charge higher fees and see their market share increase over time. In contrast, parents choosing public schools either have a harder time gauging the school’s value-added or are less quality-sensitive in their choices. This is particularly concerning in the case of students enrolled in very poorly performing public schools where after five years of schooling they may not be able to read simple words or add two single-digit numbers.

Given that parents who opt for public schools appear to be less sensitive to quality, one reform instrument often supported by policymakers is the school voucher, whereby public money follows the child to the family’s school of choice. The idea is that making private schools “free” for families will allow children to leave poorly performing public schools in favor of higher-quality private schools. This strategy assumes that parents, when choosing among schools, place significant weight on the cost of the school, manifest in its fees. What’s more, one may reasonably expect that such “fee sensitivity” will be higher in low-income countries and among low-income families. Yet a 2022 analysis of the LEAPS villages showed that a 10 percent decline in private-school fees increased private-school enrollment by 2.7 percent for girls and 1 percent for boys. From these data we estimated that even a subsidy that made private schools totally free would decrease public-school enrollment by only 12.7 and 5.3 percentage points for girls and boys, respectively. This implies that most of the subsidy, rather than going to children who are leaving public schools, would be captured by children who would have enrolled in private schools even without the tuition aid. Further, most of the children induced to change schools under the policy may come from high- rather than low-performing public schools, limiting any test-score gains one might expect.

One alternative to trying to move children out of poorly performing public schools is to focus on improving those schools. A LEAPS experiment that my co-authors and I published in 2023 evaluated a program that allocated grants to public schools in villages randomly chosen from the LEAPS sample. We found that, four years after the program started, test scores were 0.2 standard deviations higher in public schools in villages that received funds than in public schools in villages that did not. In addition, we observed an “education multiplier” effect: test scores were also 0.2 standard deviations higher in private schools located in grant-receiving villages. This effect echoes an economic phenomenon that often occurs in industry—that is, when low-quality firms improve, higher-quality firms tend to increase their quality even further to protect their market share. In the LEAPS villages, the private schools that improved were those that faced greater competition, either by being physically closer to a public school or by being located in a village where public schools were of relatively high quality at the start of the program. The same was true of private schools in villages where the grants to the public schools were larger.

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The education multiplier effect increases the cost-effectiveness of the grant program by 85 percent, putting it among the top ranks of education interventions in low-income countries that have been subject to formal evaluation. But beyond that, accounting for private-school responses also changed the optimal targeting of the policy. For instance, our analysis shows that if policymakers consider test-score increases in public schools only, a policy that divides resources equally across villages also maximizes test-score gains; there is apparently no trade-off between equity and effectiveness. Once private-school responses are considered, however, equal division of resources exacerbates existing inequalities in learning among villages. This implies that a government that values equity should distribute more resources to villages with poorly performing public schools.

Implications for Policymaking

With 90 percent of Pakistani children living in neighborhoods with multiple public and private schools, the days when government could formulate policies that affected only public schools are long gone. The same is true of many other low-income countries where parents also have significant school choice, ranging from Chile to India. Every policy will have an impact on both public and private schools, even if a policy only targets public schools. Policymakers can choose to ignore these additional effects, but to do so is to miscalculate the policy’s full impact. Our studies are still too premature to help factor parental and private-school responses into the design of policy. A key insight from the LEAPS research is that there is significant variation among schools in terms of performance and among parents in terms of their preferences for quality. A policy to improve public schools can lead to an education multiplier effect in one context but cause private schools to exit in another. A broad understanding of the dynamics of education markets, such as parents placing a very heavy weight on physical distance to school in their choices, can shed some light on this variation. Yet the data requirements to make detailed predictions about how policies will play out in specific settings may be too onerous, at least for now.

How then to proceed? Three broad principles are emerging from the LEAPS project.

First, there is little evidence that parents choosing to send their children to private schools in low-income countries are being fooled or hoodwinked into receiving a substandard education. On the contrary, the parents choosing private schools seem to be more informed and better able to reward school quality. The bigger problem is the substantial population of children enrolled in very low-performing public schools, even when there are better public schools nearby. Unfortunately, policies that seek to move children from public to private schools by means of vouchers may end up spending a lot of money on children who were already going to private schools. What’s more, the test-score gains from such policies may be limited if most of the children who do switch from a public to a private school come from higher-performing public schools. Indeed, a 2022 study by Mauricio Romero and Abhijeet Singh showed that both of these dynamics play out in India’s Right to Education Act, which established one of the world’s largest voucher schemes. Subsidizing private schools in a way that consistently improves test scores by moving children out of low-performing public schools remains an elusive goal.

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If we cannot move children out of low-performing public schools, the alternative is to improve those schools. The second principle, then, is that governments should maintain a focus on improving the quality of public schools. Results of the first generation of efforts to do so in low-income countries were mixed at best, but studies of newer reform efforts that emphasize improved pedagogy, incentives, teacher recruitment and training, and school grants are all showing positive results. A 2021 study by Alex Eble and colleagues, for instance, showed dramatic improvements in test scores in The Gambia with an intervention that used a variety of strategies: hiring teachers on temporary contracts, making changes in pedagogy, monitoring teachers, and giving them regular feedback. Again, the benefits of these policies may extend beyond the public schools they target. In schooling markets, the education multiplier effect will create positive knock-on effects for private schools.

Third, leaders should consider an entirely different class of policies. These are policies that do not privilege either the public or private sector but acknowledge that both parents and schools face constraints and that alleviating these constraints can lead to significant improvements in both sectors, regardless of the preferences of parents or the cost structures of schools.

Studies by the LEAPS team present two examples of such policies. In the first, the team provided parents and schools with information on the performance of all schools in a village—public and private—through school “report cards.” We found that this intervention improved test scores in both public and private schools and decreased private-school fees. The policy, in this case, pays for itself and has been recognized as a global “great buy” by a team of education experts.

As a second example, in 2020 the LEAPS team provided grants to private schools, but in some villages, we gave the grant money to a single school and in others to all private schools in the village. We found that in the first scenario, the school used the money to upgrade infrastructure and expand enrollment but with no resulting improvement in test scores. However, when all the private schools in a village received a grant, schools expanded enrollment and increased student test scores. These schools anticipated that simultaneous capacity improvements by all the private schools would lead to a price war, driving profits to zero, so they focused largely on test-score improvements to maintain profit margins. In both scenarios, the combination of boosted enrollment and higher fees increased the schools’ profits. These increases were large enough that, had the schools taken the money in the form of loans, they would have been able to repay them at interest rates of 20 to 25 percent or more. Finally, the schools improved even though the grant terms did not explicitly require them to—showing that the market generated the incentives for improvement without additional monitoring and testing by external parties, which in Pakistan has proven to be both costly and difficult.

These interventions leverage the fact that many children in Pakistan and around the globe now live in neighborhoods with multiple public and private schools. In these environments, progress relies on alleviating broader constraints in the education market rather than focusing on specific schools or school types. Moving beyond “public versus private,” we now need policies that support schooling markets, not schools—the entire ecosystem, not just one species.

Jishnu Das is a distinguished professor of public policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, India.