LAHORE
AN educational revolution is taking place in Pakistan. The emerging reality of Pakistan, both urban and rural, is that there is a well-defined educational marketplace at the primary level with actively engaged players on both sides of the market-the schools and the parents.
These views expressed by Harvard University Educationist Professor Dr Asim Khwaja in a lecture on “Using data and analysis to inform policy: education in Pakistan” at Punjab Planning and Development Department.
Punjab Chief Economist Dr Shujaat Ali, PD board members Arifa Saboohi, Rafia Nazir, Dr Sabiha Mansoor and government officials attended the seminar.
Dr Asim said that the one-school village (two if gender segregated) had given way to a selection among public and private schools (religious schools are rarely used with the percentage of children enrolled in such schools stagnant at 1-3 percent of enrolment countrywide). The “education story” in Pakistan is the rise of an active and competitive educational marketplace where self-owned, for-profit private schools offering secular education provide parents another option to invest in their children’s education, he observed.
Dr Asim Khawaja said that out-of-pocket spending by households on children’s education was higher than what the government spent on providing education through public schools for the richest one-third of the rural household sample, and is roughly equal for the middle third. Even among the poorest one-third of households, out-of-pocket expenditures, at Rs 100 per month amounts to 75 percent of government educational spending on this group. Across the board, more than one-half of children’s educational expenditures are now borne by parents. Even though government schooling is a free option, poor parents are spending substantially on their children’s education, both by enrolling their children in private schools and spending on additional educational investments beyond school fees, he added.
Commenting over the debate about private schools or reform in government schools, he argued that his reading of the education discussion in Pakistan was that the views expressed and stands taken were seldom supported by a systematic look on the data, albeit in many cases because the data was just not available. He explained that his current research on educational policy issues would have served its purpose if data from households and schools informed the debate on education in the country.
Dr Khwaja said that his research indicated that private schools were overwhelmingly located in richer villages, while government schools ensured equitable geographical access for all income levels. Within villages, private schools were located in central and richer settlements. The main constraint on private schools was the availability of an educated (female) workforce. Private schools do not rise in a vacuum: government investment in girls’ secondary schooling during the 1980s probably paved the way for private schools today.
He reiterated that the public sector had been remarkably successful in ensuring access to schools at the primary level in large parts of the country, including Punjab. Further expansion includes the setting up of secondary schools (especially for girls) and identifying pockets where school availability is still a concern. In addition, the government needs to experiment with policies that can decrease the “distance-penalty” for girls, he added.
Dr Khwaja was of the view that in countries where private schooling option was widespread, policy options in education had revolved around public-private partnerships. Such partnerships largely involved government financing and private delivery of education. Examples include grant-in aid schools (UK, India) and charter schools in the US which largely involved block grants/funding to private schools. The other model was financing families directly through vouchers to each school-going child.
This had been tried in Colombia, Chile, Sweden and the US among other countries. How well these alternate forms of partnerships work was highly debated and depended on a country’s circumstances. In the context of Pakistan, vouchers may lead to greater social stratification; if such stratification meant that children learnt less from each other and it may have a detrimental effect on learning, he said.
Source: The News, 15/4/2008
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