NEVER before has there been such an urgent need for evidence and for that evidence to be meaningfully translated into effective policy. There are more than 26 million five- to 16-year-old children who are out of school in Pakistan, which ranks as the eighth most vulnerable country to the impact of climate change. In 2022, Pakistan endured one of the most devastating climate disasters in its history: catastrophic floods that submerged a third of the country, directly affecting over 33m people, including 16m children. Over 30,000 schools were damaged or destroyed, halting education continuity and leaving marginalised children — especially girls, those with disabilities, and those from underserved regions like rural Balochistan and Sindh — disproportionately vulnerable. This tragedy following very soon after the Covid-19 pandemic, exposed the fragility of Pakistan’s education system, highlighting its inability to withstand systemic inequities and external shocks.

In May 2024, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declared an “education emergency” across Pakistan. This declaration came at a telling moment — in 2023, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) revealed that only 55 per cent of Grade 5 students could read a simple Urdu story, and just 48pc could solve a basic two-digit division problem. Simply put, across the country, roughly half the children in Grade 5 cannot read a simple Urdu story and cannot solve simple math problems. The World Bank puts the learning poverty figure for Pakistan at around 77pc, ie, 77pc of 10-year-olds are not proficient in reading text that is appropriate for their age. These sobering figures highlight a persistent learning crisis and entrenched inequities and inefficiencies in Pakistan’s education system.

The crisis we face — systemic inequities and vulnerability to shocks — underscores an urgent need for transformative, evidence-based reforms that ensure access to meaningful learning opportunities for all children. But this raises further questions: firstly, do the data and evidence exist for policymakers to make critical decisions on how best to spend their limited resources? Secondly, if the evidence is there, why isn’t it being used to support key policy decisions in the education sector?

The World Bank puts the learning poverty figure for Pakistan at around 77pc.

On the first question — Pakistan has made great strides in generating high quality data through government and non-government initiatives. These include private sector-led large-scale initiatives like ASER but the biggest strides have been made in the public sector. The Education Management Information Systems give a lot of data on infrastructure and facilities, teacher availability and student numbers. Monitoring data generated by monitors in almost all provinces gives information on the state of facilities and usage, class attendance, and teacher attendance. The monitors generate some learning data too but provinces have large-scale tests that give learning data too. This data is not perfect, we need significant improvements in what we collect as many important variables are missing (we do not have birth registration for every child, data on children with disabilities is usually not collected, etc). We also need to improve the quality of some of the data, especially that related to learning outcomes, but much more is available than ever before.

There is, however, an even greater need for data to be effectively translated into actionable policy. This requires genuine collaborations and capacity strengthening across a number of sectors and players. Academia and research institutions need access to data the government collects. Researchers need access to policymakers to share their research and policy recommendations. Policymakers need access to experts and researchers to raise questions and concerns, which might be important for them. All this requires significant collaborations across multiple players and institutions.

The federal government recently created the Pakistan Institute of Education by merging a co­u­­­ple of institutions for this very purpose. The PIE has started efforts to reach out to academic and research organisations to form collaborations.

Some of these efforts are funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office research programme, to build the capacity of and strengthen the PIE to improve the effectiveness of existing data. This includes evaluating and synthesising exis­ting data and evidence and identifying key gaps. There is also a need to facilitate the production of and then effectively communicate the research to policymakers for action. These efforts to forge collaborations, generate the capacity for res­earch and communication, facilitate the use of data and cr­­eate a feedback loop that goes from evi­d­ence-based policy to improvements in data collection and usage will take time to establish/ dee­p­en and would have to be nourished for quite some time.

Focusing on the second question of why available evidence is not used in education policymaking req­uires further thought. The production of evide­nce is not enough; feeding this into the government machinery at the right time is also crucial. Engag­ing with decision-makers and aligning rese­arch with government priorities is also key. This can be achieved through policy dialogues and other efforts.

There might be political issues too that need sorting. Policymaking might be aimed at appeasing strong interest groups, instead of doing only what the data and evidence suggests. But even here, producing data-backed evidence is the first requirement. Once the evidence is available, there should be pressure on the policymakers to do what is needed, instead of appeasing interest groups. This part might not be easy for experts and academics to do, but we cannot even make it to this point without good research and evidence-based analyses. We still need a lot of work in the generation of evidence and its effective dissemination.

Too many children are out of schools and too many who are in school are not learning enough. This must change if Pakistan is to have sustained decent growth and sustained poverty reduction. But for it to happen, we not only need to generate quality data, we also need the capacity for evidence-based research and analysis and then dissemination of that research to policymakers through the engagement of all relevant stakeholders. We can see some beginnings of this in education, but there’s still a long way to go.

Dr Faisal Bari is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Dr Monazza Aslam is a managing partner of the UK-based education think tank OPERA, and research director of the FCDO-funded Data and Research in Education Research Consortium in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2025