Out-of-School Children in Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

A recent Express Tribune newspaper headline screamed: "Over 27 million children out of school" It included the following graphic that looks even more scary:

The story had the intended effect. Various commentators and pundits responded in a knee-jerk fashion. Without scrutinizing the data and checking the facts, they declared the situation "hopeless". Many Indian readers also jumped in on the discussions at various Internet sites to reinforce the doom and gloom about Pakistan.

Instead of joining the mourning crowd, I decided to check the original sources and found as follows:

1. The actual number of out of school children of primary age in Pakistan is 5.1 million.

2. The figures of 50% in Punjab, 61% in Sindh, 65% in KP and 78% in Balochistan are for pre-primary children ages 3 to 5 years, not for ages 6-16 years.

3. In 6-16 years age group, 7% of urban and 23% of rural children are out of school.

Source: 2012 Global Monitoring Report

4. The number of primary-age out-of-school children has declined from in 8.4 million in 2001 to 5.1 million in 2010.

5. According to Pakistan Standards of Living Measurements PSLM 2011-12, the country's literacy rate is 58%, not 54% as claimed in the latest Express Tribune story.

Source: 2012 Global Monitoring Report

6. Data from Harvard researchers Rober Barro and Jhong-Wa Lee shows that Pakistan has been increasing enrollment of students in schools at a faster rate since 1990 than India. In 1990, there were 66.2% of Pakistanis vs 51.6% of Indians who had no schooling. In 2000, there were 60.2% Pakistanis vs 43% Indians with no schooling. In 2010, Pakistan reduced it to 38% vs India's 32.7%.

Source: Pakistan Education Stats

UNESCO data also shows that a significant percentage of out-of-school children in Pakistan are expected to enter school:

I do not see any justification for the usual expressions of extreme pessimism that follow every alarmist report in the media. I do, however, see an urgent need for higher spending and greater focus on education by the incoming government to make faster progress, particularly in closing the gender gap in school enrollment. A recent report about significant education successes in Punjab prepared by Sir Micheal Barber gives me hope that the PML (N) will perform better than the last government in responding to the challenge.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Educational Attainment in Pakistan

Upwardly Mobile Pakistan

Biotech and Genomics in Pakistan

India & Pakistan Comparison Update 2011

India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2010

 

Eating Grass-The Making of Pakistani Bomb

 

Educational Attainment Dataset By Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee

Quality of Higher Education in India and Pakistan

Developing Pakistan's Intellectual Capital

Intellectual Wealth of Nations

Pakistan's Story After 64 Years of Independence

Pakistan Ahead of India on Key Human Development Indices

 

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan School Enrollment Rising But #Education Quality Remains Unacceptable: ASER 2015 Report http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/?p=472641 via @ePakistanToday

In 2015, 20 per cent of children were reported to be out-of-school. That number has decreased as compared to previous year, which had over 21 per cent children out-of-school.

Only 49 per cent of boys in grade five were able to do grade two level subtraction as compared to 41 per cent of girls in grade five.
2015 saw a six per cent rise in the number of children enrolled in public schools, as compared to 2014

Some 76 per cent children between the ages of six and 16 were enrolled in public schools in 2015, while last year the number was 70 per cent.

According to the report, student competencies in learning English, arithmetic, and language have also improved.

The ASER Survey also has identified that boys are outperforming girls in literacy and numeric skills in rural Pakistan. As many as 49 per cent of boys were able to read at least a few sentences in Urdu/Sindhi/Pashto as compared to 42 per cent of the girls.

For Arithmetic, 49 per cent of Class-V boys were able to do second grade level subtraction as compared to only 41 per cent Class V girls.

In addition to the assessment of children, the report also highlights school functioning across every district in Pakistan. The ASER rural survey informs that overall teachers’ attendance in government schools stood at 89 per cent as compared to 91 per cent in private schools on the day of the survey.

The reverse is the case for MA/MSC or postgraduate qualifications, whereby larger percentage of public sector teachers has a higher qualification than private sector counterparts.

The trends in multi-grade teaching across schools are also mixed. ASER 2015 National rural findings have found 49 per cent of government and 29 per cent of private schools are imparting multi-grade teaching at the second grade level. On the contrary, at the eighth grade level, multi-grade teaching is more prevalent in the private sector at 24 per cent as compared to 16 per cent in government schools.

Despite of the fact that only two per cent private primary schools receive funds from the government (as compared to 29 per cent public primary schools), the private sector has been reported to be better at school facilities.

For example, 65 per cent of private primary schools have boundary-walls as compared to 63 per cent government primary schools. Similarly, about the availability of functional toilets, it has been found that the facility was still not available in 48 per cent public and 22 per cent private primary schools in rural Pakistan.

ASER has undoubtedly played a unique role in informing the public, inspiring a national discourse and initiate demand for policy and action leading to a transformation from the bottom-up.

[Riaz Haq]

The Pakistan Education Statistics 2015-16 fact sheets compiled by Alif Ailaan shows that Pakistan failed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets for universal primary school access, improving retention in schools and increasing adult literacy.

The MGDs report available on its official page also revealed that not only did Pakistan come up short in upholding its international commitment to ensure all its citizens access to primary education as prescribed under the MDG, but it has also failed to meet its constitutional obligations at national and provincial level. The report of the MDGs has also recommended a high standard of education. The education departments of a country need to consider the urgency of improving educational quality in the country, which is not necessarily linked to infrastructure alone.

According to Alif Alian, Provincial and National Education Scores For the fourth year consecutively, Islamabad has ranked highest amongst all provinces of the Pakistan. The Education Score of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) remained at the same ranks they were last year, with KP at number five. However, the provinces suffered a decline in their Education Score of almost two percentage points each. KP demonstrated improvements in both enrolment and gender parity scores. However the reduction in the overall Education Score of the province is mainly due to the decline in retention rates.

The report of the independent organization also indicates that 50 percent of KP schools still do not have any of the four basic facilities available (electricity, drinking water, toilets and boundary walls). Unlike Punjab, KP’s districts are more evenly distributed whereby one specific region does not dominate the rest, as was the case in previous years.

The Pakistan District Education Rankings 2016 have suggested that for the fourth annual iteration for tracking progress, three districts of the province - Malakand, Mardan and Haripur - ranked in the top 25 of the country.

The data accumulation process of the organization found that two districts of the province - Tank and Kohistan - are ranked in the bottom 25. Kohistan was the worst performing district. However, as result of the Fiscal year (FY) 2016-17 KP the provincial allocation is PKR 43.6 billion while the district component is PKR 99.8 billion which will have a positive impact for the improvement of district level education status. Fifty percent of the provincial budget has been allocated for the districts but no detail or formula has been mentioned concerning how the funds are to be allocated. The minister made clear the formula or break-up of development and current allocations of funds to districts. It is pertinent to mention here that the factsheet praised the meritorious policy of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in the previous FY 2015-16 merit base recruitment of over 12,000 school teachers through the National Testing Service (NTS) in FY 2015-16.

Despite a five-year trend of increasing enrollment rates, many children are still out of school and gender disparity remains a challenge. 52 percent girls in the province remain out of school compared to 21 boys. Media Manager of the Alif Ailaan Mariam Jamal said, while speaking to Daily Time that the data presented in the factsheet was collected painstakingly at a district level and compiled at the provincial and regional levels from the Annual School Census (ASC), which is regularly conducted every year by provincial and regional Education Management Information Systems (EMIS).

http://dailytimes.com.pk/khyber-pakhtunkhwa/16-Jun-16/pakistan-fail...

[Riaz Haq]

#Stanford Study: 6-minute cellphone call improves student enrollment, teacher attendance in #Pakistan. http://stanford.io/2gPRm6Z via @Stanford


Education researchers examining a World Bank community engagement program noted its positive impact, but results varied for boys’ and girls’ schools.


BY MIRIAM WASSERMAN
A brief monthly phone call to school council members in Pakistan can be a relatively low-cost, scalable way to raise elementary-school enrollment – particularly for girls – and spur school improvement, according to a new study co-authored by Stanford Graduate School of Education Professor Thomas Dee and alumna Minahil Asim.

In the study, Asim and Dee evaluated the impact of the School Council Mobilization Program, a pilot initiative that took advantage of the widespread ownership of cell phones in rural Pakistan to strengthen citizen oversight of local schools.

“The program cost about $50 per school and it increased enrollment by roughly 12 students in the typical primary school for girls,” Dee said. “The fact that one could drive improvement in such an important outcome at low cost is extraordinarily exciting to me,” added Dee who is also a senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

The researchers, who were not involved with the mobilization program and received no outside funding for their study, were impressed by the design of the intervention and decided to examine whether it had any effect.

The school councils were established in the mid-1990s to strengthen school governance. People are often more motivated to improve their local services than central government bureaucrats. But, the performance of the councils had been mixed and it was unclear whether council members were fully aware of their roles.

The councils were made up of a head teacher and prominent individuals in the community – including shopkeepers, clerics and parents – who served for a year. A prior effort to inform council members about their responsibilities through a three-day in-person training that cost about $180 per school had been ineffective.

Simple and low-cost
In contrast, the School Council Mobilization Program used phone calls to provide a targeted, sustained, one-to-one engagement mechanism between the provincial government and school councils. Moreover, it was relatively low-cost and had the potential of being expanded to a larger scale.

The initiative, which was funded by the World Bank, paid a call center to place monthly calls for 17 months to school council members at larger schools in five districts of the Punjab province. On each call, which lasted about six minutes, the same calling agent would inform a member of a specific responsibility such as monitoring attendance, increasing enrollment and school planning. Text messages were also used initially, but were discontinued because many council members were unable to read.

In order to determine whether the call strategy had an impact, Asim and Dee looked at school outcomes before and after the intervention took place. They used comparisons with other schools and with districts where the program was not piloted to distinguish the effects of the intervention from those of other reforms and trends taking place.

They found that, in addition to raising student enrollment by 5.7 percent at the elementary-school level, the program increased teacher attendance by roughly 2 percent and made it more likely that schools had functional facilities such as toilets and water.

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http://cepa.stanford.edu/content/mobile-phones-civic-engagement-and...

http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp16-17-v201610.pdf

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan: #Education rekindles hope in minds of displaced #FATA children. #Waziristan #Taliban http://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/pakistan-education-rekindles-h... … via @reliefweb


Schools are being established across Fata, encouraging conflict stricken children to continue learning

By FARID SHINWARI

As the sun sets behind the mountains, young boys ranging from nine to 16 sit on the floor of an empty classroom in Bara tehsil, some of them adorning a scarf and hat to keep warm.

“My mind does not grasp what is being taught in class,” says Asif Khan a student and resident of Bara Khyber Agency, expressing his disappointment at the time spent out of school.

Although he is not shy about reading aloud in front of his classmates, Asif says at times the pace of the lecture feels as if it’s in “slow motion.”

“The golden time for learning has almost passed,” he says, referring to the years long interval in his studies due to the conflict in his hometown.

Several children have recently enrolled in Alternative Learning Schools (ALS). The project is part of the ‘Literacy for All’ campaign under the Annual Development Program (ADP) which has been initiated to bring education to militancy-hit Fata.

Among them is 13-year-old Khalid Khan. A resident of Bara, Khalid is sitting at a Hujra (council of elders) now turned into a school. Much like other official buildings and gatherings in the community, the Hujra designates a minimum of two rooms which can be used as makeshift classrooms.

Before enrolling at his school, Khalid and many other children relocated to safer ground due to a rise in militancy and subsequent security operation. He now attends classes at a school a few meters away from what was previously a militant base.

“I had left my home due to their [Lashkar-e-Islam's] influence. During the military operation mortar shells were fired by unknown miscreants causing a lot of displacement,” he recounted. From 2009 to 2014 Khalid and his family took refuge in Zakha Khel in Landi Kotal.

After returning home, Khalid enrolled in an ALS school, established by the Fata Education Foundation (FEF) aiming to enhance enrollment of children who were displaced during military operations.

Despite being a progressive initiative, Asif feels that the school lacks facilities. “We need a bathroom, dustbin, furniture, big black board and other facilities so as to continue learning,” he says.

Laying the groundwork

Javed Iqbal, Manager Planning and Development of FEF, says arrangements have been made for the provision of desks and stationary. He claims they will “arrive over the next couple of months.” Iqbal also adds that checks will be conducted on each school via the Village Education Committees (VEC) before and during their operating hours of 2pm to 6pm..

According to FEF more than 76 schools for boys and 61 for girls have been established across tribal regions.

[Riaz Haq]

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE > PAKISTAN
ASER Survey 2016: More students enrolling in public schools in ICT
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1472658/aser-survey-2016-students-enro...

Even as the government enhanced the education budget and is seen to be making concerted efforts to boost school enrollment in the country, the proportion of out-of-school children is still the same when compared to 2015.

This was stated in Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016 national survey report launched on Wednesday.

The seventh version of the citizen-led household-based survey, managed by the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) in partnership with a number of key civil society and semi-autonomous bodies including the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) and others, found that 19% of children between the ages of 6-16 are still out-of-school. The remaining 81% which are attending school are not learning much either.

The ASER rural survey assessed 216,365 children between the ages of 5-16 years cohort in language (Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, English), and Arithmetic competencies.

The report noted that almost all parts of Pakistan including Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Sindh, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) recorded some increase in enrollment figures from 1.4% to 4.5%.

However, at the same time, there was a considerable shift from public to private schools in most parts of the country.

The ASER 2016 rural results showed that 26% of children between the ages 6-16 years of age go to non-state schools. This was up from 24% last year.

Only the Punjab and the Islamabad Capital Territory registered a positive shift in enrollment in public schools.

Early Childhood Education (ECE) in rural parts of Pakistan has been on a declining trend, falling from 39% in 2014 to 36% in 2016.

Overall, government schools have witnessed a fall of 7.5% (63% overall) in enrollment for ECE, while the private sector continues to hold a 37% slice of total enrollment.

“There are 61 million young people in Pakistan aged 10 to 24 years as per the estimates of Population Council. Their ability and skills will play a major role in making Pakistan prosperous and a successful player in global economy,” said head of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) Joanna Reid at the launch of the report.

“If half of them [youngsters] are not equipped to do their job, Pakistan will not be able to meet the workforce needs of its economy.”

Dipping competencies

The report further notes that student competencies, especially in learning English, Arithmetic, and other languages have dipped.

As many as 48% of children from class V cannot read a class-II-level-story written in Urdu, Sindhi or Pashto.

In English, only 46% Class V students surveyed could read sentences, which should ideally be read by students of the second grade. Arithmetic learning levels too showed a decline with only 48% of class V children able to complete a two-digit division, something which is expected in the second grade.

The report revealed that only AJK showed substantial improvement in English and Arithmetic with 17% and 29% respective increase from 2015 results.

Punjab registered a solitary increase in Arithmetic learnings over scores from 2015. The survey further showed that children enrolled in private schools continued to perform better as compared to those studying in government-run schools. As many as 66% of children enrolled in Class-V in private schools were able to read a story written in Urdu, Sindhi or Pashto.

The difference in learning levels for English was starker with 65% of grade V students able to read a class-II-level sentence.

For arithmetic, 64% of children enrolled in class V could complete a two-digit division. While the gap was narrower in some provinces, the gap was a consistent feature.

[Riaz Haq]

Punjab and Sindh provinces in Pakistan are public-ising their private schools (and they’re also privatising their public schools)

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/punjab-and-sindh-provinces-in-...

Back in 2015 the Economist published an article called “Learning Unleashed”, which breathlessly declared Punjab, Pakistan to be the “new standard bearer for market-based education reform”. No matter there isn’t really any evidence that learning has been improved, never mind unleashed, what the article described is just about the opposite of a market-based reform. Through voucher and subsidy schemes, Punjab’s government injects public finance into private schools. Similarly, in the southern province of Sindh, the state is fully financing the education of hundreds of thousands of kids enrolled in private schools. And in both provinces it is the state, not the market, that sets the rules of the game.

Kids in Pakistan’s schools aren’t learning. And they’re the lucky ones who are actually in school
Test scores suggest that children in Pakistan are performing well below curricular standards. Although, unlike in India, their test scores have not worsened over time, like almost every other developing country they are not improving. Data from ASER makes for grim reading: less than a third of grade five children from the wealthiest quintile have the numeracy and literacy skills that are expected of a child in grade two. Just 17 percent of grade five kids from the poorest quintile can read a single sentence. Remember, these are the kids who managed to make it to grade five – in other words, they’ve sat through at least five years of schooling and 83 percent of them still can’t read a sentence.

As for those who aren’t in school, Pakistan’s Bureau of Statistics estimates that there are 5.6 million primary age out-of-school kids (note that this figure is based on the 1998 census, and so the true number could well be substantially higher or lower).

The twin ”crises”of low and static test scores, combined with millions of kids not in school, has led to a proliferation of education reforms. These include policies that aim to harness the vibrant and growing private education sector.

With education in crisis, government turned to the private sector for help
Provincial leaders in Punjab and Sindh are taking bold steps to reform their failing education systems. They’ve moved fast, particularly in Punjab where the Economist’s Learning Unleashed article is framed and proudly mounted on several government office walls.

Together, the PPPs in Punjab and Sindh make up one of the largest and fastest-growing public private partnerships in the world. More than three million kids in the two provinces are enrolled in around ten thousand private primary schools, with the cost of their education fully financed by the state. They’re managed by semi-autonomous entities, the Sindh Education Foundation and the Punjab Education Foundation, whose funding is almost entirely provided by their provincial governments.

[Riaz Haq]

Launch of Access for Out of School Children to #Education and Safe Schools in #Pakistan's #Tribal Districts in #KP https://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/launch-access-out-school-chil... via @reliefweb

Currently in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 1.1 million children are out of school. Mostly, out of school children live in areas that have suffered by insecurity and come from poorer households in rural areas. Emergencies have a devastating impact on a child’s education. This is particularly true for girls.

The aim of Access for Out of School Children to Education and Safe Schools in Pakistan (AcCESS) project is to improve access to quality education in emergencies, other situations of violence and early recovery phases. It is being implemented in 8 tribal districts and districts of KP which include Peshawar, Bannu, D.I. Khan, Swat, Khyber, Mohmand, Orakzai and Bajaur.

AcCESS aims to expand access to school for more than 81,469 children (50% girls) who are currently out of school or at risk of dropping out. These out of school children are selected on the basis of The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies(INEE) guidelines. That means they will be Out of School Children (OOSC) from families of Temporarily Displaced Persons (TDP), host community, returnees moving back to areas of displacement, returnees to places of origin, registered Afghan refugees and undocumented Afghans in host communities.

AcCESS will enable access to education for OOSC, strengthen quality aspects of Education in Emergencies (EiE), including recruitment, provide capacity building and protection for teachers and link education to other life-saving humanitarian sectors, such as WASH and nutrition in order to reduce vulnerability of children affected by violence and threats.


The European Union aims to help children affected by humanitarian crises to have access to safe, quality, and accredited primary and secondary education. In this project the European Union is working closely together with several partners (communities, government, HOPE 87 and donors) to increase the enrolment of children. It is an investment in their long-term future and in the peace, stability and economic growth of Pakistan.

The targeted outcomes of the project are to i) create 868 facilities with better quality learning environments, ii) improve learning outcomes for 72,531 children (50% girls), particularly in early grades literacy and numeracy; iii) increase the number and effectiveness of 1,020 teachers; iii) establish 7,650 school management committees for promoting girls education and working to address school safety, iv) strengthen the capacity of 50 government staff for school disaster management and education in emergencies and v) engage 510 communities to pursue local solutions for girls' education.

Indirectly, the project will benefit 480,000 people through the impact that better educated girls have on communities through raising health and education levels, providing social services for women at local level, as well as creating a stronger teacher cohort.

In order to increase the school enrolment of children and decrease the drop-out rate the project will work closely together with communities. . This involves discussions with community elders, representatives and men/women from wider community to gain community approval and ownership of the idea of opening a community school; support communities in electing or Mohalla Committee (MC) or Village Education Committee (VEC) including men and women (equitable representation of Pakistani/Afghan parents in host communities.

[Riaz Haq]

Teleschool goes on air today to compensate for academic loss

https://www.dawn.com/news/1548995

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday inaugurated a national broadcast education channel to mitigate the loss faced by the students due to the closure of educational institutions till May 31 in the wake of coronavirus pandemic.

Teleschool — the dedicated TV channel — will be aired through a beam provided by Pakistan Television (PTV) from Tuesday (today) across the country from 8am to 6pm for online education from class one to 12.

Speaking at its launching ceremony, the prime minister said that teleschool would help students learn during the closure of schools. This initiative would also help the government reach the remote areas, which didn’t have access to education facilities and infrastructure, Mr Khan said.

He said as Pakistan had a large number of out-of-school children (OOSC), this initiative could promote primary education and focus on the OOSC.


He said no one could predict when Covid-19 would be eliminated, as it could take two, three or six months. He said this project was highly productive in the given circumstances.

The PM was of the opinion that this project should continue even after the pandemic was over and reopening of schools. He said it would help promote education in remote areas while the concept could also be used for telemedicine.

He said that adult literacy could also be promoted through this project. He appreciated all those officials who played their role to launch this project.

Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood at the launch told the premier that education ministry was also mulling to develop an app to benefit over 20 million out-of-school children and promote adult literacy.

About country’s literacy rate, the minister said: “We have just 60 per cent literacy rate”. He said the education ministry was trying to link education with technology so that adults who wanted to learn had access to education through mobile phones.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan was also present at the launch of teleschool.

Officials of the education ministry told Dawn that the dedicated TV channel, teleschool, would be available on satellite, terrestrial and cable networks so that it would be accessible to most parts of the country, including hard-to-reach remote areas, ensuring equity in learning. An officer of the education ministry said that the ministry initially inked an agreement with PTV for three months, but if needed it could be extended as the PM also expressed his desire for the project’s continuation.

Joint Secretary (Education) Syed Umair Javed, who had supervised the content development process, told Dawn that online content was developed in accordance with country’s curriculum and it was made attractive for students.

“The credit of making this project possible in less than a month goes to unsung heroes: content developers, teachers and staff of Federal Directorate of Education, editors, techs and producers of Allama Iqbal Open University and PTV,” he said.

[Riaz Haq]

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.

[Riaz Haq]

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.