25 MILLION BROKEN PROMISES The crisis of Pakistan’s out-of-school children Citation Alif Ailaan. 2014. 25 million broken promises: the crisis of Pakistan’s out-of-school children. Islamabad: Alif Ailaan. x+70 pp. ISBN 978-969-23023-0-2 CONTENTS CONTENTS Acronyms and Abbreviations vi Foreword and Acknowledgments vii Executive Summary ix 1. INTRODUCTION 3 1.1 Methodology 4 1.1.1 Limitations 5 2. ASSESSING THE DAMAGE 9 2.1 Estimates of out-of-school children 9 2.1.1 National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) 10 2.1.2 Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLMS) 11 2.1.3 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 12 2.1.4 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 13 2.1.5 UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report 13 2.2 Why 25 million is the best estimate 14 2.3 National estimates 14 2.4 Provincial and regional estimates 15 2.5 District-level estimates 17 3. Portraits OF A BROKEN PROMISE 19 3.1 Gender 19 3.2 Area of residence (urban/rural) 21 3.3 Household income 21 3.4 Age 22 3.5 Previous schooling 23 3.6 Reasons for not attending school 24 3.6.1 Debunking the cultural myth 25 3.6.2 Quality of schooling and instruction 25 4. PROMISE INTERRUPTED 27 4.1 Calculating the number of dropouts 27 4.1.1 Survival rate 27 4.1.2 Dropouts from one class to the next 28 4.1.3 Enrolment rates from the PSLMS 30 4.2 Why children drop out 31 iii 25 MILLION BROKEN PROMISES 5. RENEWING THE PROMISE 33 5.1 Article 25-A 33 5.2 National Plan of Action 2013 33 5.3 Transforming decision making with data in the Punjab 34 5.4 The re-energisation of an education narrative in KP 35 5.5 Tackling a legacy of neglect in Sindh 35 5.6 A major new push for education in Balochistan 35 5.7 The 4% of GDP promise 36 6. GettinG THERE 39 REFERENCES 41 ANNEX 1: THE CASE FOR 100% ENROLMENT 43 A1.1 Constitutional obligations (Article 25-A) 43 A1.2 International commitments 44 A1.3 National commitments: political manifestos 46 A1.4 Provincial enrolment campaigns 50 ANNEX 2: DISTRICT-LEVEL estimates OF OOSC 51 ANNEX 3: Heat MAPS 59 A3.1 Percentage of out-of-school children between the ages of 5 and 16 years 59 A3.2 Percentage of out-of-school girls between the ages of 5 and 16 years 60 A3.3 Percentage of children between the ages of 5 and 16 who have never attended school 61 A3.4 Percentage of girls between the ages of 5 and 16 who have never attended school 62 A3.5 Percentage of students (5-16 years old) attending government school (province) 63 A3.6 Percentage of students (5-16 years old) attending government school (district) 64 A3.7 Percentage of students (5-16 years old) attending private school (province) 65 A3.8 Percentage of students (5-16 years old) attending private school (district) 66 A3.9 Net enrolment at the primary school level (age 5-9 years) 67 A3.10 Net enrolment at the middle school level (age 10-12 years) 68 A3.11 Net enrolment at the high school level (age 13-14 years) 69 iv CONTENTS TABLES Table 1.1: Proportion of private school enrolment at the primary level as shown in NEMIS and PSLMS data 6 Table 2.1: Publicly available sources of data on the number of OOSC in Pakistan 9 Table 2.2: Estimates of OOSC using various data sources 10 Table 2.3: NEMIS enrolment figures 11 Table 2.4: Trends in the proportion of OOSC by gender and province (PSLMS) 12 Table 2.5: PDHS data on OOSC by region, 2012-13 12 Table 2.6: ASER data on OOSC by gender and region, 2011-13 13 Table 2.7: National estimates of OOSC by level 15 Table 2.8: Estimates of OOSC by region 16 Table 3.1: Distribution of OOSC by gender 19 Table 3.2: Gender distribution of OOSC by region 20 Table 3.3: Number of OOSC by area of residence 21 Table 4.1: Dropouts between Class 1 and Class 2 28 Table 4.2: Government school enrolment by year and class (2002-03 to 2011-12) 29 Table 4.3: Difference in enrolment between primary, middle and high school 29 FIGURES Figure 2.1: Enrolment and OOSC by school level 15 Figure 2.2: Percentage of OOSC by region 16 Figure 2.3: Distribution of OOSC by region 17 Figure 3.1: Distribution of OOSC by gender 20 Figure 3.2: Proportion of OOSC by gender and region 20 Figure 3.3: Percentage of OOSC within various income groups 21 Figure 3.4: Distribution of OOSC by household income 22 Figure 3.5: Percentage of OOSC by age 22 Figure 3.6: Percentage of OOSC by history of previous schooling 23 Figure 3.7: Percentage of OOSC by province and history of previous schooling 23 Figure 3.8: Reasons for not attending school 24 Figure 4.1: Survival rates upto Class 5 by region 28 Figure 4.2: Net enrolment by level and gender 30 Figure 4.3: Net enrolment by level and province 30 Figure 4.4: Reasons for dropping out of school 31 v 25 MILLION BROKEN PROMISES ACRONYMS AND ABBREViations 18th Amendment Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act 2010 AEPAM Academy of Educational Planning and Management AJK Azad Jammu and Kashmir ASER Annual Status of Education Report EDO executive district officer EFA Education For All FATA Federally Administered Tribal Areas GB Gilgit-Baltistan GDP gross domestic product GER gross enrolment rate ICT Islamabad Capital Territory ITA Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi KP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa MDG Millennium Development Goals NEMIS National Education Management Information System NER net enrolment rate NGO non-governmental organisation NIPS National Institute of Population Studies OOSC out-of-school children PDHS Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey PMIU Programme Monitoring and Implementation Unit PSLMS Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey UN United Nations UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization vi FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Bismillah irr Rahman irr Raheem. This study was prepared by Saman Naz and Firuza Pastakia, both core staff members at Alif Ailaan. It was enabled by formal and informal feedback from a range of academics, government officials, representatives of non-profits and NGOs, and other friends of the campaign. The most important input to this document is from a set of unsung heroes in Pakistan’s public sector. The two key data sets from which education data are derived are the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) and the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLMS). The first is produced by education department officials at the district, province and federal levels, and the second by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. The data collectors, data entry operators, statisticians and data analysts who work in the Pakistani public sector are among the most undervalued and underutilised resources available to the Pakistani people. Their work is often ignored by policy makers and their efforts are largely unrecognised. This report is entirely a product of their labours and their dedication to their jobs. They represent a fundamental and irreplaceable link within the value chain of public-sector service delivery. This document is a tribute to their efforts, and it is intended to make their work more visible and relevant to the Pakistani discourse. The suggestions contained herein are meant to place the work of Pakistani data collectors, data entry operators, statisticians and data analysts at the heart of the service delivery debate. Until the political conversation in Pakistan does not become more dependent on accurate and timely data, none of the aspirations of the people can truly be met. Many experts were requested to provide feedback on the draft version of this document, and almost all responded with deep, rich and valuable insights and comments. We are particularly grateful for the advice received from Fasi Zaka, Director Communications, British Council, on how we present our findings. Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, Senior Lecturer and Associate Director, International Educational Development Program, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and Irfan Muzaffar, Education Research Coordinator, Education and Social Research Collective, challenged some of the underlying assumptions they found in the draft, which we tried to minimise in the final version. One of Alif Ailaan’s closest and most vocal supporters, Baela Raza Jamil, Director Programmes Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi, offered brilliant feedback and corrected mistakes for us. Shakeel Ahmad, Policy Specialist, United Nations Development Programme; Maqsood Sadiq, Senior Programme Officer, Population Council; and Minhaj ul Haque, Consultant, The World Bank, were instrumental in providing us confidence in the numbers we used and the calculations we made. Javed Malik, Education Adviser, UK Department for International Development, helped us understand the strong progress made in Punjab and the importance of taking into account the often unaccounted growth of the private-sector provision of education. M. Nazir Mahmood, Development Consultant, M&E and Education vii 25 MILLION BROKEN PROMISES Management, offered insights on a range of issues that were valuable to the final output. Umair Javed, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics, and Mariam Chughtai, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, provided important feedback from an academic perspective and helped us locate this report in the larger context of academy and scientific inquiry. Finally, Afzal Latif, Secretary, Elementary and Secondary Education Department, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, offered wise counsel and helped us meet the appropriate balance between our analysis and our activist zeal.