Comment by Riaz Haq on March 21, 2017 at 6:36pm

Table 2 of Human Development Report 2016 shows that Pakistan's HDI grew at an annual growth rate of 1.55% in 2000-2010, much faster than 1.09% in 1990-2000 and 0.95% in 2010-2015.

Pakistan's overall HDI growth rate from 1990 to 2015 as 1.24, slower than India's 1.52%.

http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/2016_human...

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 25, 2017 at 7:58am

Education chaper 10 from Economic Survey of Pakistan 2016-17


http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapters_17/10-Education.pdf

According to the Household Integrated Income
and Consumption Survey (HIICS)
National/Provincial levels with urban/rural
breakdown, the literacy rate of the popul
(10 years and above) remained at
compared to previous conducted PSLM Survey 2013-14

--------


Gross Enrolment Rate (GER), is also
the participation rate, defined as the number
children attending primary school
the number of children with specific age group
(5 to 9 years) who ought to be attending school
The overall GER at the Primary level for the
age group at National/Provincial
2015-16 recorded at 87 percent as compared to
90 percent in 2013-14 showing a decline of 3
percent. A cursory look at the table, GER
indicates that the only Sindh province has shown improvement of 2%

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 26, 2017 at 4:32pm

Pakistan literacy rate dropped to 58% last year from 60% the year before. 


From Economic Survey of Pakistan 2016-17 on education in chapter 10:

http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapters_17/10-Education.pdf
Literacy
According to the Household Integrated Income
and Consumption Survey (HIICS)
National/Provincial levels with urban/rural
breakdown, the literacy rate of the popuationl
(10 years and above) remained (58%) as
compared to previous conducted PSLM Survey
at National/Provincial level in 2013-14


From Economic Survey of Pakistan 2015-16 on education in chapter 10:


http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapters_16/10_Education.pdf


According to the latest Pakistan Social and Living
Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey 2015, the
literacy rate of the population (10 years and
above) is 60 percent as compared to 58 percent in
2014. 


Gross Enrollment Rate dropped from 89% in 2014-15 to 87% in 2015-16 


Net Enrollment Rate dropped from 57% in 2014-15 to 54% in 2015-16. 

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 31, 2017 at 10:18am

Should we double the education budget, or seek 100pc literacy?
AHMAD ALI | NADIA NAVIWALAUPDATED A DAY AGO
Pakistan has doubled its budget in recent years, but enrollment has stagnated. As a result of the inefficient use of funds, access to quality education for children across the country stands compromised.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1335342

In recent years, the federal and provincial governments have undertaken numerous reforms with varying levels of success. Despite their efforts, a lot remains to be done to get kids into school and improve learning in the classrooms.

To address these educational challenges, the efficient and effective use of the available budget for education is key.

Pakistan’s education budget has gone up by an average of 17.5pc every year since 2010

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The budget has more than doubled since 2010

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Pakistan’s education budget can now measure up to the defence budget

Note: The defence budget does not include military pensions, the cost of the nuclear programme (estimated at $747 million by the Stimson Center), or military operations in FATA.

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Since 2010, education has been a provincial responsibility. Hence, Pakistan's education budget is derived by summing up the federal and individual provincial budgets.

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Provinces have allocated 17pc to 24pc of their budgets for education in 2016-17. (The provincial budgets for 2017-18 will be released in the coming weeks).

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The ‘current budget’ is for salaries and operational costs (non-salary), whereas the ‘development budget’ is for the construction and rehabilitation of schools. Recent history suggests that provinces tend to under spend on development and non-salary budgets, but overspend on salaries, so that they end up utilising most of the education budget.

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Unesco recommends that countries disburse 15pc to 20pc of their budgets on education. The global average is 14pc. Compared to its total national budget, Pakistan spends 13pc.

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In Pakistan's case, this spending amounts to 2.83pc of the GDP on education. According to Alif Ailaan, an additional Rs400 billion on education is needed this year to increase spending to 4pc of GDP, bringing the education budget to Rs1.2 trillion.

Cutting a federal programme or collecting more taxes may help Pakistan towards that target. Cutting a federal programme or collecting more taxes may help Pakistan towards that target, but the dilemma of solving the education crisis will persist.

---

While Pakistan has doubled its budget and brought it closer to military spending, enrollment rates have stagnated.

---

Parents will send their kids to a private school, charging a few hundred rupees a month, if they can afford it. Nearly 40pc of students in Pakistan go to private schools. Their parents spend as much as the government does on education and tuition. If we add what Pakistani parents spend on education, Pakistan’s education spending exceeds 4pc of the GDP.

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Children are out of school in Pakistan because they get so little out of going to school. Teachers are either absent, or present, but not teaching.

The 2015 report of the independent Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) finds that only 44pc of third graders in rural schools (public and private) can read a sentence in Urdu. Of those who stay in school through fifth grade, only 55pc can read a story in Urdu.

It is a similar story for science at a grade four level. In 2006, 67pc of students scored below average in the National Education Assessment System (NEAS) assessment of fourth grade science. The situation further deteriorated in 2014, when the most recent iteration of the NEAS assessment divulged that 79pc of students had scored below average.

The majority of children aged five to nine in Pakistan are in school. That’s 17 out of 22 million kids, according to the National Education Management System. Improving literacy and numeracy rates for them is our best shot at convincing the parents of Pakistan’s five million out-of-school children aged five to nine that school is worth it.

Overspending on salaries

Private school teachers are paid $25 to $50 per month. Government school teachers are paid $150 to $1,000 per month, according to a paper by SAHE and Alif Ailaan. Government school teachers have more education and training than private school teachers.

In light of the difference in teachers' salaries, private schools spend less than half of what the government does per child. However, according to LEAPS, children who go to private schools are one and a half to two grades ahead of those in government schools, depending on the subject.

The danger of increasing the budget without a plan is that it could all go into salaries for non-performing teachers, as has happened in Sindh.

Sindh’s budget has octupled (increased by a factor of 8x) since 2010.

---

Meanwhile the salary budget has gone up 12 times.

---

Pakistan is also inefficient at spending money set aside for building schools. The “development budget” that is allocated for this purpose goes unspent year after year.

---

Pakistan is under-performing even at its current budget levels. The solution is not dramatic budget increases, but making sure the budget we have is translating into schools where children are learning.

Instead of asking the government to double the budget, we should ask them to double the efforts for improving quality of learning for children who have been in school for years.

---

Nadia Naviwala is a Wilson Center Global Fellow and author of "Pakistan's Education Crisis: The Real Story." Nadia tweets at @NadiaNavi

Ahmad Ali is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS). Ahmad tweets @ahmadaley

 

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 27, 2017 at 10:31pm

For too long, Pakistani schools have been a means to provide jobs, rather than education
Pakistan is trying to spend its way out of its education crisis. It can’t. But the government can learn about accountability and efficiency from private schools

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-networ...

ith more than 20 million children out of school, Pakistan has, at last, begun talking about its education crises. Our media and civil society routinely grill politicians on a lack of funding for public schools. Opinion sections of national newspapers usually publish a few articles a week on how the lack of quality education is becoming an existential threat to Pakistan’s social cohesion. Foreign aid funded projects take primetime television ads to tell parents about the importance of educating their children.

It has had some impact; education has become a key talking point in political debates. The government regularly boasts about the growing education budget with promises to provide an “excellent environment” to students. But what is lacking in this increasingly noisy debate on Pakistan’s education crisis is the experience of parents and students on the ground.

The lack of nuanced policy is leading to an alarming trend. Education spending on the ground is being translated into schools as a means to provide jobs, rather than to provide children with a quality education.

There is a very strong political element to this, as legislators are customarily elected on the basis of how many jobs they can provide to their constituents, and hence hiring new teachers takes priority in budget allocation, particularly when close to a general election. For the government, this preoccupation appears to kill two birds with one stone; an easy fix for the education crises, and sought after permanent government jobs for their constituents. As a consequence, education departments are typically the single largest employers in most provinces. 

Increasing the number of teachers across the country has also been an easy policy for everyone to get behind, especially since the public discourse on fixing the education crisis has largely been focused on the need to spend more on education. In 2016, Pakistani provinces spent between 17 to 28% of their budgets on education, while the global average was 14%. Combined that’s $7.5bn spent on public education nationally, with most provinces doubling their budgets within the past five years.

But Pakistan can’t simply spend its way out of its education crisis. On the ground, most of the spending is being used for hiring non-performing teachers or providing salary hikes for existing teachers. A small section of the spending is set aside for new education infrastructure however about half of it, on average, goes unspent by provinces every year. In fact, the proportion of spending on much-needed education infrastructure has decreased, as salaries take a larger than ever proportion of the spending total.

The problem is that this rapid rise in spending isn’t translating into education for all. School enrollment nationally has continued to stagnate. Even if enrollment drives are able to get students into schools, evidence shows that only one in four children who enroll in the first grade remains in school by the 10th grade. Even of those students who remain in school, most aren’t learning basic skills like literacy. Studies have shown that over half of all 3rd graders, children aged 9-10, in government schools are illiterate.

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For change to happen the quality of the conversation around Pakistan’s education crisis needs to improve. The people need to demand better teachers who are accountable to the communities they teach in, while donors need to rethink about their fixation with unrealistic funding targets and instead support reforms which make schools more efficient.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 13, 2018 at 9:06pm

What’s Really Keeping Pakistan’s Children Out of School?
By NADIA NAVIWALA OCT. 18, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/opinion/pakistan-education-schoo...


Less than half of third graders in Pakistan can read a sentence in Urdu or local languages. Thirty-one percent can write a sentence using the word “school” in Urdu, and 11 percent can do it in English.

Children in government schools report that teachers have them clean, cook, massage their feet and buy them desserts. Children are categorized as smart or stupid as soon as they start school. Corporal punishment is severe. Parents will send their kids to a private school if they can afford a few dollars a month, but they do not see government schools as worth it.

Since 2010, Pakistan has more than doubled what it budgets for education, from $3.5 billion to $8.6 billion a year. The budget for education now rivals the official $8.7 billion military budget. The teaching force is as big as the armed forces.

But Pakistan has a learning crisis that afflicts its schoolchildren despite much debate and increase in funding for education because policy interventions by the government and foreign donors misdiagnosed what is keeping children out of school.


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Although aid programs of the United States and Britain contribute a mere 2 percent of the education budget, those countries and the local elite, whose own children go to high-end private schools, have emphasized that Pakistanis demand education and that more children should be enrolled in school.

But the demand for education is already high, evidenced by the mushrooming of low-cost private schools that now enroll 40 percent of students in the country and charge as little as $2 a month.

Foreign donors also want Pakistanis to send their girls to schools, but a 2014 Pew survey found that 86 percent of Pakistanis believe that education is equally important for boys and girls, while another 5 percent said it was more important for girls. Even in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — where Malala Yousafzai is from — government high schools for girls are enrolled beyond their capacity.

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

Eighteen million of the 23 million out-of-school children in Pakistan are between 10 and 16 years old. Efforts to reach them have been negligible. These children opted out of a failing education system and now they have aged. They will not now go to school if it means starting in kindergarten. They need accelerated programs, or short crash courses in literacy and math to help them enroll with their age group.

Even if these children do not go back to school — international evidence suggests they won’t — they will, at least, become literate adults.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 2, 2018 at 3:35pm

76% Pakistan youth drop out of education: UNDP

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1701028/1-76-pakistan-youth-drop-educa...

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Pakistan launched its National Human Development Report (NHDR) – Unleashing the potential of a Young Pakistan on Wednesday at a local hotel. The report reveals that 76.9 per cent youth in Pakistan leave education for financial reasons and hope for a second chance at education.

The NHDR report-2017 reveals that Pakistan currently has the largest generation of youth ever recorded in its history, making it one of the youngest countries in the world and the second youngest in the South Asian region after Afghanistan.

The study aims to understand Pakistan’s human development challenges and opportunities from the prism of youth. It focuses on how to improve human development outcomes by empowering young people, addressing the root causes of the obstacles, and by proposing innovative ways to surmount challenges.

The Pakistan NHDR 2017 has reached out to nearly 130,000 individuals across the country out of which 90 per cent were youth making it essentially a report “by the youth, for the youth”.

According to the report in Pakistan, 64 per cent of the total population is below the age of 30 and 29 per cent is between the ages of 15-29 years. Therefore, it presents a unique window of opportunity for the country and by investment in quality education, employment and meaningful engagements, primarily can help to empower youth.

“In Pakistan the current median age of 22.5 is expected to hover at around 31 years by 2050, beyond which, the window of opportunity will start to close for good,” anticipates the report.

The study further reveals that in Pakistan youth between the age of 15-29 years make up 41.6 per cent of the county’s total labour force. In addition, almost four million youth attain working age every year.

“In order to absorb this populace into job market…Pakistan needs to create 4.5 million new jobs over the next five years which indicates 0.9 million jobs annually,” suggests the report.

Human Development Index (HDI)

The NHDR highlights wide differences in the state of choices and opportunities available for people living in different cities/localities in Pakistan. Among major cities of the country, Islamabad has the highest HDI of 0.875, followed by Azad Jammu and Kashmir with an HDI 0.734; whereas Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) recorded the lowest HDI at 0.216.

On the other hand, Punjab has the highest HDI of 0.732 whereas Balochistan has the lowest HDI of 0.421. The other two provinces, Sindh and K-P perform relatively better and fall in the medium human development category.

With regards to the district-wise breakdown, the report reveals that out of the ten top performing districts, four belong to K-P, three to Punjab, and two to Sindh, whereas six of the ten worst performing districts belong to Sindh and four to Balochistan.

Education

The report highlighting the current net enrollment growth rate of the country of 0.92 per cent predicts that it will take another 60 years to reach the target of zero out-of-school children.

It further states that a staggering 9.45 million children at the primary level were estimated to be out of school in 2015.

“Therefore to achieve this goal by 2030…Pakistan must increase its net enrollment ratio to a yearly growth of 3.8 per cent,” suggests the report.

The study reveals that Pakistan’s increased educational attainment levels have failed to reduce the socio-economic deprivation of a significant section of the population.

Youth vote

The report while quoting National Youth Perception Survey states that only 24 per cent of youth expressed to have trust in politicians. However, approximately 90 per cent male and 55 per cent female expressed their intention to vote in the 2018 general elections.

http://nhdr.undp.org.pk/

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 29, 2018 at 8:39pm

#Pakistan Social sector to get special focus in #CPEC 2nd phase to begin in 2019: #Chinese diplomat Lijian. #education #health | World | http://thenews.com.pk  | Pindi

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/412001-social-sector-to-get-specia...

http://cpec.gov.pk/social-sector-development-projects

Social sector will get special attention in the second phase of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), said Acting Ambassador of China Zhao Lijian.

The second phase begins with the start of new year, 2019, he said while talking here in FM-98’s program “Hum Qadam”. The initial phase of the CPEC has focused on infrastructure and energy projects in Pakistan which witnessed significant growth.

During the next 5 years, small projects will be the focus of attention under the CPEC, which include renovation of schools, innovation in hospital system, poverty reduction, model villages and supply of clean water for the public.

In addition to this, small scale power generation projects will be built in remote areas, Zhao liJian said adding in the education sector more than 22,000 Pakistani students are studying in China, while more Pakistani students will be sent their for higher education.

He said that more Pakistanis would be trained in China and Pakistan to overcome the problem of manpower for Chinese companies working on various projects in Pakistan. The Acting Ambassador said, the construction of Karakoram Highway from Hawelian to Thakot and Motorway M-5 from Multan to Sukkur will be completed soon.

Furthermore, he said that 7 key projects of energy have been completed in Pakistan including solar, wind and coal-generated projects, due to which significant reduction in energy problems has been seen, while work on more projects is going on speedily.

Referring to the negative reports about CPEC in local and western media, the Ambassador said, CPEC is being built with national consensus. He said that despite controversy in political matters between the political parties, complete consensus about CPEC and Pak-China relations is there inarguably.

He contended, public awareness is needed in response to negative reports published in this regard. Zhao LiJian further said that the people should be aware of the basic objectives of negative propagators, because their negative reports generally give the impression that the CPEC is a burden on Pakistan's economy on account of interest rates. All such reports are baseless without having any ground reality, he categorically stated.

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