PakAlumni Worldwide: The Global Social Network
The Global Social Network
Karachi Slum Girl Goes to Harvard Business School
Anum Fatima, a resident of Ibrahim Goth slum located near Karachi's Steel Town, is making history; she is going to Harvard Business School this summer as part of a student exchange program.
Anum's father is employed as a driver and her mother works as a maid. The slum school she attended is run by The Citizen's Foundation (TCF), a private foundation. From 5 schools in Karachi in 1995, TCF has expanded to 910 purpose-built schools with 126,000 students in 97 towns and cities across Pakistan.
 |
| Institute of Business Management (IoBM) Karachi |
After graduating from the TCF school located near her slum, Fatima has completed her BBA in Human Resource. She is currently attending College of Business Management (CBM) of the Institute of Business Management (IoBM), a private Business School in Karachi.
Anum is breaking many stereotypes about Pakistani women, particularly poor women, by studying business management at top business schools in Pakistan and the United States. She told a news reporter that when she broke the news to her father, he did not know what Harvard was. “When he went to work that day, he asked his boss, who told him what a tremendous achievement it was,” she said.
Although it's the first time that a TCF grad is going to Harvard, the Foundation schools have had many success stories of its graduates from poor families who have gone on to attend professional schools to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers and business executives.
In spite of its many failings in adequately funding human development, Pakistan has continued to offer much greater upward economic and social mobility
to its citizens than neighboring India over the last two decades. Since 1990, Pakistan's middle
class had expanded by 36.5% and India's by only 12.8%, according to an ADB report titled "Asia's Emerging Middle Class: Past, Present And ...
New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise described the rise of Pakistan's middle class in a story from Pakistani town of Muzaffargarh in the following words:
For years, feudal lords reigned supreme, serving as the police, the
judge and the political leader. Plantations had jails, and political
seats were practically owned by families.
Instead of midwifing democracy, these aristocrats obstructed it, ignoring the needs of rural Pakistanis, half of whom are still landless and desperately poor more than 60 years after Pakistan became a state.
But changes began to erode the aristocrats’ power. Cities sprouted, with jobs in construction and industry. Large-scale
farms eclipsed old-fashioned plantations. Vast hereditary lands
splintered among generations of sons, and many aristocratic families
left the country for cities, living beyond their means off sales of
their remaining lands. Mobile labor has also reduced dependence on
aristocratic families.
In Punjab, the country’s most populous
province, and its most economically advanced, the number of national
lawmakers from feudal families shrank to 25 percent in 2008 from 42
percent in 1970, according to a count conducted by Mubashir Hassan, a
former finance minister, and The New York Times.
“Feudals
are a dying breed,” said S. Akbar Zaidi, a Karachi-based fellow with
the Carnegie Foundation. “They have no power outside the walls of their
castles.”
GeoTV is illustrating this welcome phenomenon of upward social mobility in Pakistan with a series of motivational "Zara Sochiey" videos on young men and women who have risen from humble origins to achieve significant successes in recent years. Each individual portrayed in the series has overcome adversity and focused on acquiring education as a ticket to improve his or her economic and social situation.
GeoTV videos feature a number of young men and women, including Saima Bilal, Kashif Faiq, Qaisar Abbas and many others, to inspire and encourage other Pakistanis to pursue their dreams against all odds.
Contrary to the incessant talk of doom and gloom, the fact is that the level of educational attainment has been rising in recent decades. In fact, Pakistan has been increasing enrollment of students in schools at a faster
rate since 1990 than India, according to data compiled and reported by Harvard University researchers Robert... . In 1990, there were 66.2% of Pakistanis vs
51.6% of Indians in 15+ age group who had 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%.
As of 2010, there are 380 (vs 327 Indians) out of every 1000 Pakistanis
age 15 and above
who have never had any formal schooling. Of the remaining 620 (vs 673
Indians) who
enrolled in school, 22 (vs 20 Indians) dropped out before finishing
primary school, and
the remaining 598 (vs 653 Indians) completed it. There are 401 (vs 465
Indians) out of every 1000
Pakistanis who made it to secondary school. 290 (vs 69 Indians)
completed secondary school while 111 (vs. 394 Indians) dropped out.
Only 55 (vs 58 Indians) made it to college out of which 39 (vs 31
Indians) graduated with a degree.
Education and development efforts are beginning to bear fruit even in remote areas of Pakistan, including Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Guardian newspaper recently reported that FATA's Bajaur agency alone has 616 school with over 60,000 boys and girls receiving take-home rations. Two new university campuses have been approved for FATA region and thousands of kilometers of new roads are being constructed. After a recent visit to FATA, Indian journalist Hindol Sengupta wrote in The Hindu newspaper that "even Bajaur has a higher road density than India"
Prior to significant boost in public spending on education during Musharraf years, the number of private schools in Pakistan grew 10 fold from about 3000 in 1983 to over 30,000 in 2000. Primary school enrollment in 1983 has increased 937%, far greater than the 57%
population increase in the last two decades.
With current public education funding at just 2% of GDP, the Pakistani government is clearly abdicating its responsibility of educating poor children. Fortunately, there are a number of highly committed individuals and organizations like The Citizens Foundation (TCF) and the Human Development Foundation (HDF) which are very active in raising funds and building and operating schools to improve the situation in Pakistan. It is important that all of us who care for the future of Pakistan should generously help these and similar other organizations.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Pakistan Must Fix Primary Education
Pakistan Human Development Since 1980s
Working Women in Pakistan
Pakistan's Out-of-School Children
Pakistan's Human Capital
Status of Women in Pakistan
Upwardly Mobile Pakistan
Teach For Pakistan
Business Education in Pakistan
Developing Pakistan's Intellectual Capital
Intellectual Wealth of Nations
Resilient Pakistan Defies Doomsayers
Views: 2373
-
Comment by Riaz Haq on June 22, 2019 at 4:57pm
-
Amjad Ali, #Karachi rickshaw driver, father of six daughters sending them all to school in #Pakistan. One of his daughter Muskan just won a scholarship to study at top #business school. #education #highereducation https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2019062115073239
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1142580970215788544
In a country where many women are still discouraged from getting an education and are married off early, Amjad Ali, a father of six daughters, and a rickshaw driver, has broken the mould by sending his daughters to Karachi’s leading universities, reports Samaa TV.
“People often mocked and criticised me, saying that girls are bound to get married and move out and to stop wasting my hard-earned money on my daughters,” he said.
But one of his daughters, Muskan, recently received a scholarship from the Institute of Business Administration, which is one of the top business schools in the country. “It was one of the happiest days of my life,” he said. “Be it a son or a daughter, the right to education is equal for all,” he believes.
-
-
'Never imagined beyond my neighborhood': Taunton senior's journey from Haripur, #Pakistan to #Cornell. Spoke Urdu & Hindko but she was able to pick up English pretty quickly, becoming comfortable with it within her first year in #NewJersey https://www.tauntongazette.com/story/news/education/2021/05/11/taun... via @tauntontogo
Taunton High School senior MahNoor Abbas and her family immigrated to the United States from Pakistan to have access to better opportunities.
In September, 17-year-old Abbas will achieve that goal, attending Cornell University to study computer science.
"I never imagined beyond my neighborhood," she said. "But now I'm excited to be going. My family made sacrifices so I could do this, and it's paying off."
Abbas, grew up in a small town in Pakistan outside Haripur. In 2006, when she was still a small child, her father and two of her siblings moved to the U.S.
Abbas's family expected her mother, herself and two other siblings to be able to join them a year or so after her father immigrated, but because of the U.S. immigration system, they ended up waiting 10 years before being allowed to immigrate.
"[My mother] was the one there taking care of us and making sure we took advantage of better opportunities," she said.
One of those opportunities was moving from a public to private school, which Abbas was able to do in the fourth grade.
Finally, during Abbas's eighth grade year, she, her mother and her siblings joined her father in Taunton.
While Abbas was grateful to have her family united, moving to America was no cake walk. She said she quickly realized that the social norms were very different.
"People were much less concerned with doing things for others and their community," she said. "It was much more individualistic, like people were focused on getting ahead in terms of their own success."
At first, Abbas encountered a language barrier, but already speaking two other languages — Urdu and Hindko — she was able to pick up English pretty quickly, becoming comfortable with it within her first year in Taunton.
Abbas also encountered discrimination due to being Muslim, such as other high schoolers questioning whether it is a privilege or a right for her to wear a hijab in school.
Another issue has been people associating her religion with terrorism.
"People think it's ok to call it 'Islamic terrorism' — that's something I've had to correct people on," she said. "I don't think [terrorism] is something that should be associated with my religion. Those men think they are following the religion, but they aren't."
-
-
NETSOL’s Education Support Program Touching Lives
https://magazine.cxoforum.global/netsols-education-support-program-...
NETSOL’s Education Support Program (NESP) has proved to be a huge success after the company reported that it has hired 3 ambitious women who were the daughters of security guards working at NETSOL.
NETSOL has been actively involved in contributing to the education sector. The company has been recognized for its NESTOL Education Support Program (NESP) by PASHA Awards in 2019. The NESP Program is specifically designed to provide support to the children of underprivileged employees. The program covers almost 500 children who are working in NETSOL’s “Admin Support Function”. Moreover, the company makes sure that the children attend english-medium schools only. The students enrolled in the program can gain access to quality education from schools located all over Pakistan.NETSOL’s effort to contribute to society has indeed bore fruit with the exciting news that three young females who are daughters of security guards have been hired in NETSOL’s IT department. The company stands true to its vision:
-
-
Congrats #ParagAgrawal! Now to all those “liberal” #Pakistanis bashing #Pakistan by invoking some of the worst #Islamophobic stereotypes of #Muslims as “terrorists”, here’s an uplifting story of a #Karachi slum girl who’s now a neurology resident in #US. https://www.newsweek.com/slums-pakistan-school-doctor-1640783
Dr. Sidra Saleem's story
I grew up in a very small urban slum, between New Karachi and Gulshan-e-Maymar in Karachi, Pakistan. These slums—called katchi abadis—are areas that are not recognized by the government and so they don't get access to healthcare, education and basic necessities. The houses are small, not well maintained and roads are not constructed properly so public transport doesn't service the area. Electricity is not available on any set schedule and we didn't have addresses to receive mail.
Our house had three rooms for myself and my four siblings, my parents and my grandparents, but there were people living in worse conditions around us. Some of our neighbours had up to 10 children and they lived in one room, all sleeping on the floor.
My father is from a very small village in central Pakistan but he migrated to our katchi abadi to work as a labourer and his monthly income was the equivalent of U.S. $200 a month. Our circumstances were difficult, $200 is nothing, so it was hard to make ends
meet and there was a constant struggle for basic necessities. We would have to think several times before buying a single item, and my family and I only bought new clothes on special occasions, once or twice a year. We never had the chance to dine out or go to malls. The whole world outside our neighborhood was a "different world" to us.
As a child, I had always wanted to be a doctor and in 6th grade I made the decision to pursue that goal. However, in the back of my mind I knew that the only way for me would be to get into a government funded medical school. Privately funded schools charged a lot, and I knew I wouldn't be able to afford it. But I knew I could work hard; that was in my hands.
When I was in grade 6 or 7, I also began tutoring other students and I continued doing that all the way through to the end of medical school. I didn't earn much, only $50-100 a month for up to four hours of tutoring a day. By 10th grade, when I was 15, all schools in the education system held exams for students. I was among the very top students, scoring around 90 percent in the exams.
That was one of the happiest days of my childhood, not only for me and my family but also for my teachers. It made all of us realize that I had a bright future ahead. I then received a scholarship from the State Bank of Pakistan and went to an intermediate college. Despite the college being far from my home, there was a contentment from knowing I didn't have to worry about finances.
However, the other students mostly came from very expensive private schools and had their own personal transport and personal tutors. It was difficult, because I was not able to participate in their conversations other than about school. That was the first time I really felt that life is unfair and harder for the poor. I remember I went home to talk with my old school teachers, and they encouraged me to make my comparisons based on intellect and hard work, not money. By the end of Grade 12, I ranked 24th out of over 10,000 students in Karachi.
But there aren't very many medical schools in Pakistan, and entry into them is competitive. And, out of thousands of students who apply, perhaps only a few hundred receive government scholarships. I was fortunate enough to be among the students who received a scholarship.
-
-
TCF Is Being Featured At Expo 2020 Dubai’s Global Best Practice Programme
https://www.tcf.org.pk/2021/11/tcf-expo-2020-dubai-global-best-prac...
TCF started with a dream to educate the most vulnerable children of Pakistan, thus enabling them to create a better future for themselves, and become agents of positive change. While this dream started with five schools, today TCF’s school network is spread across Pakistan, with 1,687 schools present in even the most remote areas of the country.
TCF at Expo 2020 Dubai
As a testament to TCF’s promise to provide quality education, TCF has been selected as one of the top 25 projects worldwide to be showcased at the Expo 2020 Dubai’s Global Best Practice Programme, ‘Small Steps, Big Leaps’, Solutions for Sustainable Impact. TCF was selected after a review of 1,175 applicant programmes from 141 countries by an international committee.
The Global Best Practice Programme is an initiative that recognises organisations from around the world that have provided tangible, adaptable and scalable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. It sheds light on projects for global visibility and knowledge that are in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and have localised the Global Agenda in their countries, communities, neighbourhoods and households to ensure that no one is left behind. Amongst the five key topics the programme focuses on – including inclusive and sustainable service delivery, water and energy security, resilient habitats, and livelihoods and enterprise development – TCF has been selected in the social development category for its unique educational model in Pakistan.
The Global Best Practice Programme will highlight TCF from 2nd Dec 2021 – 2nd Jan 2022 as one of the successful and impactful solutions in the Best Practice Area (BPA) at Expo 2020 Dubai. The Best Practice Area (BPA) will be located in the Opportunity Pavilion next to the UN Hub at Expo 2020 Dubai.
The Best Practice Area (BPA) will be a multifunctional exhibition and programming space housed within the Opportunity Pavilion, where different development best practices will be showcased and shared, thus modelling the idea of an “interactive hub” as a reflection of Expo’s overall theme – Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.
-
-
ASER Report Findings:
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/913975-educational-outcomes
These poor living conditions (in urban slums) are also reflected in the delivery of education. Around 20 percent of the urban slums surveyed did not have a government school. The majority of children living in the surveyed urban slums were enrolled in private schools (59 percent) that include madrassahs (eight percent) and non-formal education providers (one percent) and the remaining children (41 percent) were enrolled in government schools. Enrolment is higher in the 5-10 age bracket, while one in three children of 16-year-old is out of school.
There are also inter-district variations. Government school enrolment is higher in Lahore (59 percent) while private school enrolment is higher in Korangi, Karachi (again 59 percent). In terms of madrassah enrolment, it varies between two and three percent in Lahore, Malir, and Korangi, and it is 24 percent in Karachi-West where one in four children is studying in a madrassah.
Girls relatively fall behind in terms of enrolment. With regard to evaluating learning outcomes, children studying in urban slums lag behind the ASER assessment in 2019 in these very same districts conducted as part of the ASER survey. However, urban slums of these four districts are being assessed systematically for the first time in this pilot study.
According to the report, “In 2019, learning outcomes (5-16 year old) gathered in the same four districts revealed Urdu/Sindhi story reading at 46 percent, while in 2021 the four district katchi abadis, story reading in Urdu/Sindhi is 35 percent. For two-digit division in 2019, 41 percent children were competent, while in katchi abadis in 2021, it is 26 percent; in 2019, 46 percent children could read sentences in English, but in katchi abadis in 2021, 37 percent children can read English sentences. The challenges can be interrogated by gender, institution, mother tongue, psychosocial well-being etc.”
Despite challenges, girls performed relatively better in numeracy and literacy in urban slums. Similarly, children studying in private schools showed relatively better results than those studying in government schools. It is again something that has already been highlighted by me in an article ‘Private education’ (October 31) published on these pages. Madrassah students’ educational outcomes were extremely poor. Only 7.4 percent could read a story in Urdu/Sindhi, 10 percent could read sentences in English, and 4.4 percent of more than 400 madrassah students (5-16 years old) who were assessed as part of the pilot study could solve division problems.
The other important factors are learning in the mother tongue, household wealth, parents’ – particularly mother’s – education, technology availability and usage that are positively correlated with higher learning outcomes of children. The report also states that psychosocial well-being is important, and as someone who has always believed and practised in never ever giving up and always having a good fight with a positive frame of mind no matter how difficult and arduous circumstances might be at some point in one’s life, one sees the wisdom in including this variable in the report while assessing children’s well-being.
Another positive finding of the report is that technology and internet usage is prevalent in the majority of houses in urban slums. Roughly 80 percent of the households have mobile phones – 63 percent even have smartphones – and 21 percent have laptops/computers. In total, one-third of the participating households (33 percent) stated that they use the internet. This shows that there is tremendous potential for web-based technology-oriented learning and livelihoods solutions.
-
-
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...
-----------
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...
-
-
The education spending multiplier: Evidence from schools in Pakistan
Tahir Andrabi Natalie Bau Jishnu Das Naureen Karachiwalla Asim Ijaz Khwaja / 11 Jun 2023
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/education-spending-multiplier-eviden...
Private schools in Pakistan, as in many other countries, are financed almost entirely through school fees. Therefore, when public schools improve, private schools must also improve or risk losing valuable revenue as parents opt for public schools. This column examines the effect of a public school grants programme in rural Pakistan and estimates the ‘education multiplier’ for the effect of public funding on private sector school quality. The authors find that grants given to public schools increase test scores in both public and private schools as a result of increased competition.
In the past, policymakers worried that there were not enough schools for children in low- and middle-income countries. But today, millions of children in these countries live in villages or neighbourhoods where they can choose from multiple public or private schools. Figure 1, for instance, shows a typical village in the Learning and Educational Achievement in Pakistan Schools (LEAPS) study. The village takes 20 minutes to cross on foot, but has five private and two public schools. The average village in the LEAPS sample has 7.3 schools, and 60 to 70% of the rural population in Punjab (Pakistan’s largest province) lives in such environments. If we include cities, that fraction rises to more than 90%.
That is a big deal for public policy, which has historically failed to account for the relationship between public policy and the private sector in education.
To see why, note that private schools in Pakistan, like in many other countries, are financed almost entirely through school fees, which parents must be willing to pay. Therefore, when public schools improve, private schools must respond, or face the risk of losing valuable revenue as children opt to attend improved public schools. Thus, understanding the total impact of any programme - even those targeted purely to public schools - requires considering its effect on all other schools in the market, not just on the school where the intervention was implemented, as accounting for the total effects can lead to very different conclusions about effectiveness. Our new paper (Andrabi et al. 2023) measures the effect of a public school grants programme in rural Pakistan and estimates the ‘education multiplier’ for the effect of public funding on private sector school quality.
-
-
The education spending multiplier: Evidence from schools in Pakistan
Tahir Andrabi Natalie Bau Jishnu Das Naureen Karachiwalla Asim Ijaz Khwaja / 11 Jun 2023
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/education-spending-multiplier-eviden...
The Evaluation
Our evaluation has three key features: the environment, the intervention, and the data.
Environment: We worked in 80 villages with closed education markets, where 90% of the children in the village attend schools in the village, and 90% of the enrolment in the schools comes from the village itself. Closed markets allow us to trace the full impact of public school improvements on other schools without getting into tricky questions of determining which private schools compete with treated public schools.
Intervention: Our intervention was a grants programme where money was given to public schools for necessary investments determined by a newly constituted school council in collaboration with an NGO. The programme was allocated to randomly selected villages, and the research team had zero contact with the government, both in the targeting of schools within villages and the implementation of the scheme, allowing us to identify the effects of the policy as it would be implemented by the government in practice.
Data: We collected data from all schools in these villages between 2003 and 2011 as part of the LEAPS study. We tested more than 70,000 children, interviewed more than 4,000 school-owners and teachers, and collected detailed information on the households of the tested children. We also gathered information about which schools exited and entered the market over these eight years and how their enrolments changed over this period.
Five years after the programme started in 2006, public schools in treated villages had received an additional PKR 492,020 in funding compared to those in control villages. This amount translates into a 42% increase over the funding that control schools received in this period and 29% of median annual public-school expenditures (inclusive of teacher salaries). Consistent with the new guidelines, we also find that the composition of school councils became more socioeconomically inclusive and representative of the parent body, and the number of school council meetings increased.
Test scores increase in public and private schools
We then show that the programme causally increased aggregate test scores in treated villages by 0.2 standard deviations. This aggregate increase reflects, first, an increase in test scores of 0.2 standard deviations among public schools. Strikingly, through the education multiplier, it also reflects an increase in test scores of 0.2 standard deviations among private schools. Furthermore, among private schools, test score improvements were higher in schools that faced stronger competitive pressures. Consistent with models of ‘horizontal differentiation’, private schools located closer to public schools saw larger test score increases. Consistent with models of ‘vertical differentiation,” private schools located in villages with higher-quality public schools at the beginning of the programme improved the most, even though there was no heterogeneity in the impact of the treatment on public schools themselves by baseline test scores.
-
-
The education spending multiplier: Evidence from schools in Pakistan
Tahir Andrabi Natalie Bau Jishnu Das Naureen Karachiwalla Asim Ijaz Khwaja / 11 Jun 2023
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/education-spending-multiplier-eviden...
Private school fees and their entry or exit into the schooling market are not affected
Interestingly, we do not find evidence of a treatment effect on private school fees, exits (or entries) or market shares - by 2011, the market share of private schools was the same in treatment and control villages. The fact that market share did not change does not mean that parents do not respond to or observe improvements in school quality. Rather, enrolment shares in 2011 are an equilibrium outcome following quality changes in both sectors.
Cost-effectiveness
Using standard methods from the literature (Dhaliwal et al. 2013), we then show that the intervention increased test scores in public schools by 1.18 standard deviations for every US$100 in additional spending. But once we factor in improvement in private schools as well, cost-effectiveness increases by 85% to 2.18 standard deviations for every $100 in additional public funding, putting the programme among a small group of highly cost-effective interventions (see Evans and Yuan 2022). Finally, the education multiplier also had fundamental implications for how programmes should be targeted. We show that regardless of whether the government is interested in maximising test score gains from the programme or is interested both in equity and gains, accounting for the education multiplier changes the optimal geographical targeting and distribution of grants across villages.
Comment
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next ›
Twitter Feed
Live Traffic Feed
Sponsored Links
South Asia Investor Review
Investor Information Blog
Haq's Musings
Riaz Haq's Current Affairs Blog
Please Bookmark This Page!
Blog Posts
Will India Grow Old Before it Gets Rich?
India's population has aged faster than expected while its economic growth has slowed over the last decade. This raises the obvious question: Will India get old before it gets rich? Is India getting poorer relative to its peers in the emerging markets? …
 |
Posted by Riaz Haq on October 29, 2024 at 12:30pm
India: A Rogue State Ruled By Gangsters?
The United States and Canadian governments are alleging that Indian government agents plotted assassinations of Sikh dissidents on their soils. Their investigations paint a shocking picture of how recklessly Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government operates. …
 |
Posted by Riaz Haq on October 19, 2024 at 4:43pm — 7 Comments
© 2024 Created by Riaz Haq.
Powered by
You need to be a member of PakAlumni Worldwide: The Global Social Network to add comments!
Join PakAlumni Worldwide: The Global Social Network