Alif Ailaan Pakistan District Education Rankings 2013
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Alif Ailaan Pakistan District Education Rankings 2013 In association with The Sustainable Development Policy Institute Alif Ailaan May 2013 CONTENTS Foreword ........................................................................................................................................................... v! Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 1! Methodology ..................................................................................................................................................... 1! Scope of the rankings ................................................................................................................................... 1! Education index ............................................................................................................................................. 2! Access ....................................................................................................................................................... 2! Attainment ................................................................................................................................................. 3! Achievement .............................................................................................................................................. 3! Gender parity ............................................................................................................................................. 3! Calculating the education score ................................................................................................................ 4! School index .................................................................................................................................................. 4! Limitations ..................................................................................................................................................... 4! Data sources ................................................................................................................................................. 5! Education index – Provinces and territories – National rankings ...................................................................... 6! School index – Provinces and territories – National rankings ........................................................................... 6! Education index – Districts and agencies – National rankings ......................................................................... 7! School index – Districts and agencies – National rankings ............................................................................ 11! Education index – Azad Jammu and Kashmir – District rankings .................................................................. 15! Education index – Balochistan – District rankings .......................................................................................... 15! Education index – Federally Administered Tribal Areas – District rankings ................................................... 16! Education index – Gilgit-Baltistan – District rankings ..................................................................................... 16! Education index – Islamabad Capital Territory – District rankings ................................................................. 16! Education index – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – District rankings ........................................................................... 17! Education index – Punjab – District rankings ................................................................................................. 18! Education index – Sindh – District rankings ................................................................................................... 19! School index – Azad Jammu and Kashmir – District rankings ....................................................................... 20! School index – Balochistan – District rankings ............................................................................................... 20! School index – Federally Administered Tribal Areas – District rankings ........................................................ 21! School index – Gilgit-Baltistan – District rankings .......................................................................................... 21! School index – ICT – District rankings ............................................................................................................ 21! School index – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – District rankings ................................................................................ 22! School index – Punjab – District rankings ...................................................................................................... 23! School index – Sindh – District rankings ........................................................................................................ 24! District scorecards .......................................................................................................................................... 25! iii iv FOREWORD Bismillah irr Rahman irr Raheem The Alif Ailaan Pakistan District Education Rankings 2013 is a pioneering effort to enhance the quality of political debate around education in Pakistan. The objective of having a district ranking is to localise the debate about education. As the Alif Ailaan campaign has sought to remind Pakistanis this election season, the big picture in education is stark and demands urgent action. An out-of-school population of 25 million children between 5 and 16 years of age is no small matter. However, that is not the end of the conversation. In fact, it is just the beginning. There is no magic wand that will put every child in school and ensure that each one of them receives a quality education. It will happen one child at a time, one better teacher at a time, and one improved school at a time. The single place where these individual changes will aggregate is at the district. The Pakistani district is a contested political idea. Advocates for local government see the district as the most vital unit of governance, while advocates of the need to deepen provincial control over national resources argue that without consolidated provincial powers, true decentralisation cannot be realised. Regardless of how decentralisation and local government take shape in the future, the most coherent unit of government, above that of the individual school, is the district. Districts have provincially allocated budgets, administrative heads (District Coordination Officers or DCOs) and, most importantly, departments for education, headed by Executive District Officers (EDOs). How well districts perform therefore is not an abstract construct, but a concrete representation of the level of effort that has been invested in a given district. Moreover, district administrations are where the execution of policy takes place, both in terms of broad prioritisation and specific public-sector investments through the development budget. When political representatives, like MNAs and MPAs, win a new school or a school upgrade for their constituencies, they are really adding to the complement of public infrastructure in a given district—so a district’s performance is also a reflection of political action. The Alif Ailaan campaign has deliberately included all districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), and Free or Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). These areas all receive taxpayer funds and are therefore, to various degrees, within the domain of the political, administrative and fiscal conversations in Pakistan. By publishing these rankings, the Alif Ailaan campaign seeks to stimulate conversation and debate around two things. First, the methodology of ranking districts around a topic like education and, second, a series of questions (and answers) about why different districts have been ranked higher or lower than what people v may have expected. No one is ever happy with any ranking—and this is as it should be. There is nothing to celebrate about the state of education in Pakistan. The principal author for the Alif Ailaan Pakistan District Education Rankings 2013 is Asif Saeed Memon of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), with contributions from the Data and Evidence team at Alif Ailaan, led by Saman Naz. SDPI’s Hamza Abbas, Junaid Zahid, Safwan A. Khan and Safyan Kakakhel have also been instrumental to the research that has produced this report. A core group of experts and scholars was consulted on the methodology and process that was used to arrive at the rankings. Their input not only added value but also generated a number of changes and additions to the section of the report that details the limitations of the data and the methodology. Special thanks are due to them all, including Dr. Faisal Bari of the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, Dr. Salman Humayun of the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences, Abbas Rashid of the Society for the Advancement of Education, and Mariam Chughtai of Harvard University. Ultimately, we at Alif Ailaan see these rankings as an instrument to stimulate a political conversation about education. Between now and the publication of our 2014 rankings, inshaAllah, we will seek to reduce the limitations and expand the network of contributors and peer reviewers. To this end, all readers interested