Pakistan shows modest improvement in standard of education, says report
The Alif Ailaan District Education Rankings 2015 is the third annual attempt at comparing and contrasting the various regions of Pakistan based on their standards of education.
Alif Ailaan and SDPI began this exercise in 2013. The attempt is to assess both educational outcomes and school infrastructure by comparing the relative performance of different regions.
Objectives of the rankings
The objectives of the rankings are:
To produce a comprehensive measure of education standards in Pakistan, covering important policy areas such as access, quality, gender parity and infrastructure.
To use this measure as the basis for a comparison of different parts of the country to track their performance, and thereby to encourage healthy competition between districts and between provinces.
To create awareness about the importance of data and evidence in assessing the state of education, and to promote the use of data in the development of education policy.
To encourage more accurate and comprehensive data collection by government and non- government entities.
Provincial and National Education Scores (Primary School)
2015
Overall Pakistan’s education score remained steady (an increase of 1.67%). This is the second consecutive year of modest improvement.
The biggest decline seen in the scores was in learning score, while improvements were seen in retention (survival till class 5) and gender parity.
Islamabad is the highest ranked territory for the third year running.
In 2nd and 3rd place are Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab, respectively. This represents a reversal from last year whenPunjab ranked 2nd. Punjab’s score declined by 3.38%, while AJK’s stayed static.
Gilgit-Baltistan holds steady at 4th position while its education score increased by 1.69%.
Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) exchange positions for the second year in a row, with KP reclaiming 5th spot which it had lost last year. KP shows an improvement of 13.15% in its education score (second largest improvement), while Sindh dropped by 1.02%.
Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) round up the bottom of the rankings. This, despite a drop in -
Balochistan’s score (3.67%) and a large increase in FATA’s score (15.12%).