With nearly 67 percent of its population below the age of 30, Pakistan stands as one of the youngest nations in the world. This vast youth bulge presents us with a golden opportunity to capitalise on a potential “demographic dividend,” while also presenting the challenge of providing adequate services, jobs and engagement opportunities for our youth.

While the country has reached middle-income status and made some progress in developing its human capital, the pace has been slower than that of other developing countries and regional peers. The sluggish pace of human capital development poses challenges not only to realising this potential demographic dividend, but also to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and attaining upper-middle-income status by 2047. Among the critical factors in human capital development, providing quality and inclusive education is of paramount importance

Recently, the Planning Commission integrated various school education indicators into a holistic composite index at the district level. The objective is to make data available in a form that is easily understood and utilized, by policymakers and other stakeholders, to inform advocacy, policy planning, resource allocation and accountability around school education.

The District Education Performance Index (DEPIx) is a comprehensive tool that measures the performance of education systems at the district level, focusing on key outcomes, such as access, learning, equity; processes such as governance; and inputs including public financing and infrastructure.

The DEPIx is structured across five domains: Infrastructure & Access, Learning, Inclusion (Equity & Technology), Governance and Management, and Public Financing. A total of 34 indicators have been used to measure these domains.

The District Education Performance Index is a tool to measure the performance of education systems in districts across the country. While the findings paint a grim picture, including disparities across provinces, it also provides a starting point for policymakers and stakeholders to drive meaningful change…

DEPIx covers 134 districts across Pakistan, including Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Punjab, Sindh and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). The report covers the years from 2020-23, depending upon availability of data. The report classifies districts into five education performance categories: very high, high, moderate, and low.

It is worth highlighting that the report’s findings have certain limitations, caused by the limited availability and coverage of data. For instance, most of the infrastructure, access and financing indicators do not cover private schools, because the scope of the existing data regime is restricted primarily to public schools. Hence, the findings of the report may be interpreted subject to these data-related limitations.

Overview of national-level results

The findings of the report paint a concerning picture of the state of education in Pakistan. Pakistan’s national average score on the index is a modest 53 out of 100, placing the country in the “low” performance category.

The national average varies across the five domains of the index, indicating differential performance of sub-thematic areas within the larger education system. Notably, Infrastructure & Access scores the highest at 58.95, indicating some progress in expanding educational opportunities nationally. Inclusion (Equity and Technology) follows as the second-highest domain.

Public financing records the lowest score of all domains, highlighting the need for increased and better-targeted public spending in the education sector. The Learning domain also scores poorly, reflecting persistently low learning outcomes among students in public schools. Governance & Management, though slightly better than Learning, still falls in the “low” category, mainly due to teacher shortages and high bureaucratic turnover.

Overview of Provincial-level Results

Within the country, there are significant variations across provinces, with Punjab emerging as the top performer at 61/100. KP follows with 55/100, while Sindh and Balochistan trail with scores of 51.5/100 and 46/100, respectively. Notably, none of the provinces reached the “high” or “very high” performance categories, with both Punjab and KP falling into the “medium” category.

Notwithstanding the overall index scores, there are notable differences in provincial scores across domains, indicating the relative strengths and weaknesses of each province within the larger education delivery system. The specific areas of strength and weakness for each province are as follows:

Punjab outperforms other provinces in Infrastructure & Access (73.36) and Inclusion (75.05), but scores lower in Public Financing and Governance & Management.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa excels in Public Financing and Governance & Management, but ranks lower in Learning compared to other provinces.

Sindh shows relative strength in Public Financing, where it ranks highest, but lags in Infrastructure & Access and Governance & Management.

Balochistan faces severe challenges across all domains, ranking lowest in nearly all areas except Learning, where it performs only slightly better than the worst-performing province.

District-Level Insights

None of the 134 districts falls within the “very high” performance category, and only Islamabad falls in the “high” category, making it an outlier as the highest-performing district in the country. Nearly two-fifths (58/134) of districts fall into the “medium” category, with Punjab leading with 32 districts, followed by KP with 17, and Sindh with 8.

Alarmingly, more than half of Pakistan’s districts (76) fall in the “low” performance category. These low-performing districts are predominantly in Balochistan and Sindh, with 33 districts in Balochistan and 22 in Sindh, highlighting substantial inter-provincial disparities. Notably, all districts of Balochistan fall in the “low” education performance category, indicating severe challenges across the province.

Apart from ICT, the top 10 districts are exclusively from Punjab and KP, with seven from Punjab and two from KP. No districts from Sindh or Balochistan are represented among the top 10. The strong performance in these districts is largely due to high scores in Infrastructure & Access (82.54) and Inclusion (Equity & Technology) (76.58).

In contrast, Balochistan dominates the lowest-scoring districts, with 6 out of 10. Infrastructure & Access, a strength for top districts, is the most significant weakness for the lowest-ranked ones, with an average score of 36.39.

Intra-Provincial Disparities

Significant disparities in education performance exist within provinces as well. KP exhibits the greatest intra-provincial differences, with districts such as Haripur, Chitral, and Abbottabad among the top performers country-wide, while Kolai Palas, Upper Kohistan, Lower Kohistan and Waziristan rank among the lowest. There is nearly a 30-point gap between the best and worst performing districts in KP.

Punjab and Balochistan show the least intra-provincial variation, with Punjab’s districts mostly falling into the “medium” category and all of Balochistan’s districts in the “low” category. Sindh has moderate variation, with most districts in the “low” category, except for the urban districts of Karachi and Hyderabad.

Lessons and recommendations for education policy

The findings of the report offer the following critical lessons and insights for education policy and practice:

Reading and numeracy: The top priority of education policy should be the improvement of reading and numeracy skills, which are critical not only for enhancing the quality of education, but also reversing the crisis of out-of-school children (OOSC).

The 2023 Census data reveals that 80 percent of OOSC are those who never enrolled in a school. While a number of supply-side deficiencies and socio-economic factors explain this, the lack of parental confidence in the quality of education in public schools is among the most critical drivers of their reluctance to enroll kids in public schools.

Research shows that parents’ perception of education quality is a key factor in their decision to enroll their children in public schools. This implies that simply investing in school infrastructure is unlikely to significantly reduce the number of OOSC, unless parents believe that their children will receive a quality education. Therefore, in order to truly improve quality and learning outcomes, a paradigm shift is recommended — one that places the child and the classroom at the heart of education policy and practice.

Public financing: DEPIx highlights the need for both increased and better-targeted public financing in education. While raising public spending on education to 4 percent of GDP is crucial, it is equally important to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of these expenditures.

Interestingly, the index reveals that provinces with the highest scores in public financing do not necessarily achieve the best education outcomes, particularly in learning. The weak link between education financing and outcomes suggests that simply pouring more money into the system without addressing underlying inefficiencies will not yield the desired results.

The alignment between financing and outcomes can be enhanced, among others, by shifting from an input-centric approach to outcomes-based public financing. Furthermore, public spending needs to be towards the most pressing needs of the education system.

Internet access: One of the most pressing challenges highlighted in DEPIx is the limited access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources in public schools. This stands out as one of the weakest performing indicators. The significance of improving access to ICT in schools cannot be overstated, as it plays a pivotal role in enhancing both the efficiency of school operations and the quality of education delivered.

Enhanced governance: Improving gover­n­ance and management is also critical to maximizing the use of available physical and human resources in education. This, among others, includes ensuring tenure security for education managers to promote administrative continuity and an equitable distribution of the education workforce. Currently, student-teacher ratios are skewed in favour of middle and high schools and urban centers.

Assessment systems: Assessment syst­ems across the country require major reforms. The report shows that the lowest-ranked districts in the country actually have higher matriculation examination pass rates compared to the highest-ranked districts. This is especially the case in Balochistan, Sindh, and KP.

For instance, nine of the ten lowest-ranked districts, including Nasirabad, Sujawal, and Washuk, outperform Haripur and Jhelum — districts ranked second and fourth overall. These statistics point to serious issues in the quality of assessments and a pervasive culture of cheating in exams.

Geographically-targeted interventions: DEPIx underscores the need for geographically targeted and equitable public investment in education to reduce inter- and intra-provincial inequalities. There are significant urban-rural disparities, as well as pockets of under-served districts that require targeted interventions, both within and beyond the education sector.

In Sindh, for example, there is a stark contrast between the performance of Karachi-Hyderabad and the rest of the province. Similarly, in KP, the Kohistan region, former-FATA areas, and southern districts need prioritisation, while in Balochistan, central and eastern districts require urgent attention. Punjab’s southern districts also need focused policy attention.

Facilities in public schools: While Punjab and KP have made commendable progress in improving essential school facilities, a large majority of schools in Balochistan and Sindh still lack basic essentials. The provision of these facilities in a targeted manner is necessary for ensuring enabling environment for teaching and learning.

Education data regime: Finally, the report calls for improvements in the education data regime. District-level data on learning outcomes is essential, as is the development of an integrated education human resource management information system. This system should include real-time data on teacher hiring, postings, and the tenures of education managers.

Additionally, private school census may be conducted periodically. Moreover, the existing data from census and other primary surveys, such as the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM), should be compiled and made available at both provincial and national constituency levels. This shift is recommended because electoral constituencies, not districts, are the primary units of resource allocation and public accountability. Therefore, the data covering development indicators should be published on constituency lines to enable citizens to attribute performance and hold elected representatives accountable.

While the report sheds light on some of the most critical challenges facing Pakistan’s education system, it is important to recognize that composite indices such as DEPIx, by design, simplify complex realities and cannot capture the full scope of the situation.

This report serves as a starting point, guiding policymakers and researchers towards the key issues that warrant deeper analysis and further investigation. It is hoped that policymakers, academics, and civil society will leverage the insights from this report to foster more informed debates and drive meaningful improvements in education service delivery across the country.

The writer is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Member, Social Sector at the Planning Commission of Pakistan.
X: @rafiullahkakar

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 15th, 2024