ALL reforms are local and must be contextualised. Oft-quoted in the literature on local-level reforms, Micklethwait and Wooldridge point out that “the state is an incredibly blunt instrument; it gets hold of one overarching idea and imposes it without any sensitivity to local context”. Such is the case of education planning in many developing countries where local realities and challenges are not taken into account. This is one of the reasons equity concerns continue to prevail in the education sector.

Pakistan is no different. All the four provinces have their specific planning documents called education-sector plans that put forward an agenda to improve educational access, quality, governance and management of education at the provincial, and in a broader sense, the district levels as well. These provincial-level education-sector plans are further translated into district-level education plans in the case of some provinces. However, educational planning generally stops at the district level and there is no specific focus on sub-district levels. This is problematic on many levels.

Take the following example. District Swabi has a total of 1,305 functional public-sector schools with an enrolment of 269,919 according to the latest available Education Management Information System data of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The student-classroom ratio at the district level stands at 40:1 (40 students per classroom) which conforms to the specified limit. However, we look at the SCR at the union council level, we see that there are 25 union councils (out of a total of 55 union councils) in the district with an SCR of more than 40:1.

Distance is a major reason for dropping out of school.

As another example, take the case of district Kohat where the SCR at the district level stands at 39:1 (39 students per classroom). However, a sub-district level analysis shows that 53 per cent of union councils of district Kohat have an SCR of more than 40:1. A village-level analysis shows even greater disparities in this regard.

Here, the SCR has been presented as an example; the same holds true for other education indicators, such as infrastructure, student performance, transition and retention of students, to name a few. There follow two cases which further drive home the point.

Zooming in on a select case of union council Kabgani of district Swabi, it had a total of 21 public schools for girls according to KP education data for 2017-18. Out of these 21 girls’ schools, 18 are at primary level, and two at middle level whereas only one school in the district provides secondary-level education for girls. Considering the covered area of Kabgani and the fact that only one post-middle school is available, many girls prefer not to study beyond the middle level.

Gajai is a village in this union council that has a middle school but all girls passing the eighth grade have been discontinuing their education for many years. In order to reach the only girls’ high school of the area, they have to travel 11 kilometres. Cultural issues and security concerns do not allow the parents to send their children to this distant school. Union council Nasrat Khel of district Kohat is another example; it has seven primary and only one middle school for girls. Similar to village Gajai, the girls of village Jabbi in this union council did not have the opportunity to continue education beyond Grade 5.

These are not the only villages where girls suffer such a fate. There are many villages in KP and the other provinces of Pakistan, where both boys and girls drop out of schools at the post-primary level because of the distance barrier. Analyses of official data reveal that around 44pc of students enrolled in Grade 5 drop out of schools in Pakistan before reaching Grade 10. There is a need to handle this challenge of transition and retention of students more tactfully, discuss ideas and come up with innovations that provide sustainable solutions to the challenge; ones that conform to local realities.

Significant disparities exist at the district and sub-district levels in Pakistan, not only in terms of educational attainment but also available infrastructure, human and financial resources, quality of education, transition and retention of students, especially at the post-primary levels.

To address these disparities, it is important that the provincial governments make their planning processes responsive to the unique local-level challenges and provide room for exploring local solutions to them. This seems to be the only way equity issues around schooling and learning for the disadvantaged and marginalised children can be addressed and the dream of equal access to quality education for all children achieved.

The writer is a research fellow at the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences, Islamabad.
abdullah_alam@yahoo.com
Twitter: @abdullah_alam

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2018