Citizens Foundation, the Skoll Awardee Profile

Citizens Foundation, The Skoll Awardee Profile

Organization Overview

Key Info

Social Entrepreneur Mushtaq Chhapra

Year Awarded 2013

Issue Area Addressed Education

Sub Issue Area Addressed Early Childhood to Primary Education, Secondary Education, Women's and Girls' Education

Countries Served Pakistan

Website http://www.tcf.org.pk

Twitter handle TCFPak

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TCF.Pak/

Youtube http://www.youtube.com/tcfusa

About the Organization The Citizens Foundation (TCF) was set up in 1995 by a group of citizens concerned with the dismal state of education in Pakistan. It is now one of Pakistan's leading organizations in the field of formal education. TCF has established 1,060 purpose-built school units nationwide, with an enrollment of 165,000 students. TCF encourages female enrollment and strives to maintain a 50 percent female ratio in most of its campuses. TCF has an all-female faculty of 7,700 staff members. They also have dedicated teacher training centers in Karachi and Mansehra, and they provide logistical support to all their teachers. TCF has helped create more than 11,500 jobs in the communities where it operates. TCF's vision is to remove barriers of class and privilege and to make the citizens of Pakistan agents of positive change. They believe that access to basic education is the right of each individual and not a privilege. Apart from following the regular curriculum, TCF focuses on character building, to equip students with high moral values and confidence.

Impact

TCF's network has grown in size to nearly 1,500 schools and more than 200,000 students. There is a TCF school in one-third of districts in Pakistan. As part of a pilot, more than 250 of TCF schools were adopted from the provincial Government of Punjab; following the pilot's success, the Government has asked TCF to adopt even more. TCF has become the largest private employer of women in Pakistan. More than 14,000 women work as principals, teachers, and school staff; of these, more than 500 are TCF alumni. A 2017 UK Aid assessment showed that 5th grade TCF students significantly outperformed the provincial average in reading and math. For example, 83% could read a story in the local language (compared to 37% in the Sindh province). 96% of students passed matriculation exams (following 10th grade), while 64% passed with high marks (A/A+). In parallel, teacher competency scores have improved (78% in 2016, up from 51% in 2011). 78% of matriculated students enrolled in intermediate college, and 40% of those enrolled in tertiary education following intermediate college. 71% of alumni are employed.

Path to Scale

TCF has considered additional paths to scale, including various mechanisms for sharing its curriculum and methods with other schools and school systems. Agreements to take over and manage schools currently administered by provincial governments would be considered if they included guarantees of control over hiring and firing of teachers and principals.

Social Entrepreneur Mushtaq Chhapra is one of six friends who, in 1995, decided they would leverage their experience building companies to build a network of 1,000 schools for Pakistan's poorest, out-of- school children. The schools would be a model for what education in Pakistan could be.

The group put their own money into a pilot to build 5 schools in Karachi’s worst slums that did not have electricity, sanitation, and clean water. These schools would not be ‘poor schools’ for the poor. The founders believed that poor children should go to formal schools- like the ones they went to.

Today, the network has grown in size to nearly 1,500 schools and more than 200,000 students. Having exceeded the goal of building 1,000 schools, TCF is now experimenting with new partnerships and schooling models to reach 2 million children by 2030.

Mushtaq Chhapra has been awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, one of Pakistan's highest civilian awards. TCF has been vetted and has received accolades from: the Skoll Foundation, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Clinton Global Initiative, Qatar Foundation’s WISE Awards, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award (sometimes called the “Nobel Prize for Asia”). TCF was a finalist for the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) prize and won the UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy.

Equilibrium Overview

Current Equilibrium

Pakistan has the world’s sixth largest population and has the second-highest number of out-of- school children (OOSC) in the world (after Nigeria). The problem is compounded by the poor quality of education, so that even if children are in school, they are essentially illiterate. Less than half of third graders in Pakistan can read a sentence in Urdu or local languages. Demand for quality public school education greatly exceeds supply as the government has failed to deliver mass education due to mismanagement, corruption, and a shortage of qualified teachers. Twenty-three million children are out-of-school, including 5 million at the primary school level,[1] with only 3 of every 10 children completing tenth grade.[2]Schools are enormously oversubscribed. Teacher absenteeism is also a major problem, resulting in high student dropout rates. Experts agree that in the last 30 years, the quality of public education in Pakistan has gone down dramatically. Low-cost private schools have stepped in to fill the gap and to increase enrollment. Forty percent of children in Pakistan today go to private schools.[3] But even in private schools the quality of learning is poor. In private schools in Faisalabad, only 33% of third graders could complete a grammatically correct sentence in Urdu in 2014. That statistic has not changed since 2003. By grade 5, the rate only doubles to 66%.[4] These children are on average 1.5 to 2.5 grades ahead of those in government schools.[5] The majority of out of school children – 18 out of 23 million – are between ages 10 and 16. This population either dropped out or has never been to school. Many were forced to drop out because there is no secondary school (grades 6 to 10) available where they live. Eighty percent of government schools in Pakistan are primary schools. Pakistan has dramatically increased spending on public education, doubling the budget between 2010 and 2015. More importantly, reform programs are in full swing with progress varying across provinces primarily backed by the World Bank and UKAID. According to the Economist in January 2018, “The biggest of Pakistan’s four provinces, larger in terms of population (110m) than all but 11 countries, Punjab is reforming its schools at a pace rarely seen anywhere in the world.” These reforms are being replicated in other provinces. The reform plans have similar dimensions such as improving school infrastructure, merit-based hiring of teachers through a test, and monthly monitoring to ensure that teachers show up to school. [1] Pakistan Education Statistics 2016-17 available at http://library.aepam.edu.pk/Books/Pakistan%20Education%20Statistics%202016-17.pdf [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] Data from Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) research team published in In School But Illiterate. https://www.dawn.com/news/1268969 [5] See LEAPS report available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/PAKISTANEXTN/Resourc es/Publications-and-Reports/367132-1208398596098/2008LEAPS.pdf

New Equilibrium

In the new equilibrium, all Pakistani children will have access to a quality education. As a result, every child will be able to fulfill their aspirations and become an agent of positive change. Every child will be able to enroll in a school at the age of 5 because there is a school in the vicinity that functions as a school should and it is affordable if not free. Schools will be within walking distance for children or transportation will take children to school. Schools will be safe spaces for children. Parents will not hesitate to send their girls to school because teachers are trusted. School buildings will not only meet minimum standards for safety and have appropriate facilities, such as toilets, furniture, and adequate classrooms so that every class has its own space, but they would be designed and decorated as spaces that inspire children to learn. They will also have adequate ventilation and light to moderate Pakistan’s extreme temperatures in the summer and winter, given the lack of electricity. By grade 5, every child should be literate (able to read a sentence in Urdu) and numerate (able to do division). Children will learn and teachers will teach in the language they speak, and learn other languages, such as English, as second languages. Schooling will inculcate five values: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Conceptual Knowledge, Confidence, and Communication Skills. Children will stay in school till the end of grade 12, after which they will be able to transition to university, start a business, take up a vocation, or pursue any path they wish. In secondary (middle and high) school, career and college counselors will help children transition out of school and into jobs or higher education. In the short term, provincial governments will achieve these reforms with help from private partners. But as schools produce a more educated generation, they will help push the system to greater improvements.

Innovation

The Citizens Foundation (TCF) was established in 1996 to provide quality education to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children of Pakistan, with a special focus on girls in urban slums and rural areas. TCF developed a model with innovations such as a full female faculty and schools within walking distance of the children to encourage enrollment of girls, leading to near gender parity in its student body, far surpassing national female enrollment percentages. TCF also involves parents – who are often illiterate – in their children’s schooling, making them believers in education. TCF’s vision is to remove barriers of class and privilege and to make the citizens of Pakistan agents of positive change. TCF’s model focuses on: Increasing accessibility: TCF targets rural, hard to reach areas. Bringing the school to the child is a core focus of the model; many of the areas in which TCF operates had no school prior. Fees can be as little as two pieces of bread per month, and are relative to a family’s income, and students’ families only pay a little over $1 per month on average. Increasing quality: TCF develops specialized curriculum and provides superior training for its teachers, principals and school staff. TCF has developed its own curriculum and teacher guides, focused on critical thinking, confidence, communication, values, and citizenship. TCF provides in-house-training for new and veteran teachers and leadership programs for principals, with 100+ hours of professional development each year and door-to-door transport to school for safety for its 12,000 teachers. It has also developed the Whole School Index, enabling comparison across its geographically- diverse network with a composite score of: Principal Quality Index scores, student test scores, teacher competency, and enrollment. Gender empowerment focus. TCF promotes gender equity through its student body as well as hiring 100% female teachers and principals. Forty- eight of TCF students are girls, compared to approximately 39 percent nationally and 15 to 20 percent in TCF communities. Community Engagement. TCF engages the community in a variety of ways and seeks to understand its specific needs upfront. Its decision to build well- designed and constructed schools is partly to engender a sense of pride among all community members. These buildings are “beacons” and also enable other services through partner organizations, including literacy classes for mothers and siblings of students and clean water in some schools. Additional services such as healthcare may be added in the future through partnerships.

Ambition for Change

All Pakistani students receive quality primary and secondary education that empowers them to become qualified, contributing members of society. Schools incorporate gender-sensitive curriculum and structure, reinforcing a cycle of equality.