Education Sector Reforms–Action Plan 2001-02 – 2005-06:
Education Sector Reforms (ESR) since its launching in 2002, has emphasized at
meeting challenges confronted at all sub-sectors of education. This ESR document reflects
our national education agenda and provides a basis for national programme within the
devolution framework. The ESR witnessed growing ownership and continuity of reforms
and policy directions by the newly elected national and provincial governments. ESR has put
systematic attention to different areas of education such as rehabilitation of physical facilities;
support to multiple delivery systems; such as formal and non formal; private sector,
Mainstreaming of madaris, literacy; teacher training at; assessment and examination reform;
professional development of field managers; linking education to skills; research and research incentives; effective decentralization of services and institutional strengthening. All thrust areas are supported by vigorous innovative programmes.
Introduction:
Pakistan has an estimated population of 145 million, two per cent of the world’s
population. The areas of 88 million hectares comprise four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, North
West Frontier and Balochistan) and four territories (Islamabad Capital Territory, Azad
Jammu and Kashmir, Federally Administered Northern Areas and Federal Administered
Tribal Areas) of the total land of 88 million hectares, 20 percent has potential for intensive
agricultural use. Pakistan has an apparent dichotomy between its economic and social
indicators. The former bring the country on a par with economically prosperous countries, the
latter categorize it with lesser developed ones.
Education Sector Reforms in Pakistan is in consonance with the Constitutional
provision guaranteeing the fundamental right to education. All basic education targets for
primary schooling, adult literacy and gender equality are within the framework of Dakar
Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals. Education Sector Reforms continues to
be based on iterative planning, through consultation at sub national and national levels,
ensuring inclusion of local governments and civil society organizations. Micro planning at
the community level is well under way. Challenges in the planning of ESR include interdistrict and inter-provincial disparity, and the need to reach disadvantaged groups who are discriminated on account of gender and socio-economic status.
Policy Framework:
School Access:
The Government of Pakistan has developed Education Sector Reforms (ESR), which
has assigned a central place to school education. Provision of basic education is the main
guiding principle for its implementation. Currently the national allocation to basic education
is well over 50%. The net participation rate in 2000-2001 at primary level is 68% whilst the
participation of female participation rate is 53%. However, out of 18.1 million populations of
children at primary level age, 12.4 million children are enrolled and 5.7 million are out of
school system. Education Sector Reforms emphasizes the education provision for all school
age children and it proposes to achieve 76% net primary enrolment by 2005.
Parallel to primary education, provision of physical facilities for Middle Level
Education (i.e. class VI, VII & VIII) has been planned to create school spaces for the children
graduating from primary school system. ESR program targets the present gross enrolment of
38% at middle level education to improve to 80% by 2015.
School Improvement Program:
A major focus of Education Sector Reforms is to make primary schools more
functional by providing missing facilities such as, electricity, drinking water, boundary walls
and other basic amenities so that the children do not drop out on account of dysfunctional
environment which is not conducive to learning. School up-gradation through conventional
and non-conventional means is also a core area to narrow the gap between primary, middle
and secondary provision for higher transition rates.
Quality Education:
The elementary school system in Pakistan has grown in size consistently, achieving
an enrolment of nearly 12 million. This obviously poses a major challenge not only for
efficient management but also for mobilizing resources needed to maintain an acceptable
level of quality. It is recognized that quality improvement in education cannot be carried out
on a turnkey or sporadic basis. The challenge of quality is embedded in all sub-sectors of
sector reforms.
Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE):
Early childhood care and education (ECCE) is considered a significant input to
compensate for early environmental deprivations at home, by providing a healthy stimulating
growth and learning environment to the very young from conception to 5 years of age. The
holistic and integrated concept of ECCE clearly represents this spirit. Currently the policy
and implementation in Pakistan is more focused on Early Childhood Education (ECE) with
the age group 3-5 years, which is more at the school level than being home-based or at the
community level. While on one hand, it is expected to provide the necessary maturational and
experiential readiness to the child for meeting the demands of the primary curricula, it also positively affects the enrolment and retention of girls in primary schools by providing
substitute care facility for younger siblings. Envisaged as a holistic input, fostering health,
psychological and nutritional development, the policy emphasis is on making ECE play based, with linkages between home and the school. Since 2002 ECE has been formally
introduced in the formal government schools, supplementing the private sector, with clear
intervention methodologies as an innovative component of ESR and as the first plank of EFA
goals agreed in Dakar
Resources:
Financial constraints have all along been a major issue in the development of
education in Pakistan. Conversely, the argument that even the meager resources provided to
education have not been adequately utilized, is also true. The vast coverage of the education
sector, involving almost 200,000 educational institutions with about a million teachers and
staff spread over vast geographical areas, involves complexity of problems which are
unmatched by any other social sector.
Inadequacy of financial resources aggravated by poor implementation machinery and
complex rules necessitates immediate and effective steps to salvage the twin problems of
adequate resources and their management.
Literacy:
Pakistan has one of the lowest literacy rate in the region currently estimated at about
51.6 % (2002). However, the wide inter and intra provincial disparities present a
discriminating scenario. Literacy ranged from 57.8% among urban male population of Sindh
to 1.75% among the rural female of Balochistan. In absolute terms the number of illiterates in
ten plus age group is 51.8 million (2001).
It is generally recognized that a low participation rate of about 66% at the primary
school level combined with high inefficiency rate estimated at 55% drop outs in the public
sector, has contributed to a low national literacy rate. The literacy ratio has been negatively
exacerbated due to the absence of meaningful and over ambitious literacy programme.
Education Sector Reforms (ESR)
The ESR is based on long-term framework linked to EFA goals by 2015. The main
features include (a) sector-wide approach for reinforcement of linkages between sub-sectors
(primary, elementary, secondary, technical, higher education, non-formal literacy, madrassah
education) to eliminate gender and access gaps and ensure optimum utilization of facilities;
(b) macro-level reforms in planning and procedures; (c) institutional reforms at all tiers of the
government engaged in planning and service delivery; (d) commencement of vocational/technical education stream at secondary level; (e) quality assurance; (f) public
private partnerships. The ESR is fully integrated with relevant Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) It aims at achieving the sub-sector targets by 2005-06: Literacy from 49 per
cent in 2000-01 to 60 percent by 2005-06, gross primary enrolment rate from 83 to 100
percent, net primary enrolment rate from 66 to 76 percent, middle school gross enrolment rate from 47.5 to 55 percent, secondary school enrolment from 29.5 to 40 percent; and higher
education enrolment from 2.6 to 5 percent.
Objectives:
_ Universalization of primary education and adult literacy.
_ Mainstreaming Madaris for diversifying employment opportunities for their
graduates.
_ Improvement in the quality of education at all levels through better teachers,
upgraded training options, curriculum & textbook reforms, and competency based
examination system for promoting Pakistan as a knowledged-based society.
_ Introducing a third stream of gender and area specific technical and vocational
education at secondary level with innovative approaches for students’ counseling.
_ Empowerment to district education authorities
_ Promote Public Private-Partnerships.
_ Diversification of General Education.
Targets:
The ESR Action Plan targets are iterative and incremental aligned to emerging
national reforms and priorities. The seven thrust areas have been indemnified for their
improvements. The ESR targets for each Sub-Sector 2001-02 - 2005-06 are given below:
Sub-Sector Bench Mark 2002 Target 2006
Literacy from 49 % to 60 %
Gross Primary Enrolment from 83 % to 100 %
Net Primary Enrolment from 66 % to 76 %
Middle School Enrolment from 47.5 % to 55 %
Secondary School Enrolment from 29.5 % to 40 %
Technical Stream Schools from 100 to 1100
Polytechnics/mono-technics from 77 to 160
Madaris Mainstreaming from 148 to 8000
Public-Private Partnerships from 200 to 26000
Higher Education Enrolment from 2.6 % to 05 %
Quality Assurance
ESR Action Plan 2001-02 - 2005-06: Requirements, Allocations and
Financing Gap:
Strategies have been designed to achieve the above time bound targets across the education
sector. The Government of Pakistan has adopted outcome based planning, budgeting, and
auditing for the implementation of ESR program. The requirements of ESR Action Plan have
been prioritized in a phased manner and phase one of an ongoing costing exercise has been
completed. Innovative approaches like public-private partnership and community
participation are being explored to minimize the financing and governance gaps.
Education For All (EFA) is embedded in the ESR Action Plan. EFA- National Plan of Action
(NPA) has been developed for the period 2001-15 at an estimated cost of Rs. 430 billion,
including Rs. 303.8 billion as recurrent expenditure. Out of Rs. 430 billion, Rs. 178 billion
has been estimated to be provided through national resources and international donors are
being mobilized to bridge the gap of Rs. 252 billion. The PSDP requirement for phase-I of
EFA-NPA (2001-5) is estimated as under:
Table 2.1: PSDP Requirements for Phase-I of EFA-NPA (2001-5)
(Billion of Rs)
S.No Sub-Sectors of EFA
(Priority wise)
PSDP Estimates
Percentage of
Total
1 Primary Education 37.87 66.56
2 Adult Literacy 16.58 29.14
3 Early Childhood 2.45 4.30
Total: 56.90 100.00
Source: EFA–NPA 2001-2015
Financing of ESR:
Five categories of financial support to ESR Action Plan 2001-02 - 2005-06 are as follows:
i) Federal, Provincial, District, and Area Governments development budgets / PSDP for ESR Program, and appropriate integration of recurrent and development budget at all levels to create additional resources and ensure optimal utilization of existing resources. Various programs of different Ministries or Divisions etc that are focused on education should be integrated and Technology; (Research and Development / IT Programs), Ministry of Health and Ministry of Women Development, (Nutrition Program), Ministry of Labour and Manpower (Vocational Training & Elimination of Child Labour Programs), Ministry of Defence (Educational Institutions in Cantt & Garrisons), and Khushhaal Pakistan Program (Rehabilitation of School Infrastructures) etc shall be estimated and integrated into ESR Program.
ii) MoE provided Rs.3.574 billion in PSDP 2001-02 for implementation of ESR
Program in Provinces / Federal Areas without any contribution from
provincial PSDPs for these programs. The declining trend of budget
allocations for education sector during the last several years has been reversed
due to effective intervention through ESR. The national consolidated
expenditure for education had been Rs 1.966 billion for 2000-01. However,
expenditure on ESR program alone accounts for 100 per cent increase during
2001-02. Furthermore, provincial allocation for education has also increased
during the year 2002-03 and the national PSDP for education has increased to
Rs. 9.161 billion from what(Table 1.7).
iii) Grants and Debt Swap for education from Development Partners, UN
Agencies, Bilateral Agencies (such as US AID, DFID, CIDA, JICA, EU and
G8 Fast Track Financing for EFA), International NGOs, and Expatriate
Pakistanis. Strategic Objective Grant Agreement for Education Sector Reform
Support Program (US$ 100 million for 2001-2006) has been signed between
EAD and US AID on 9 August 2002.
iv) Loans from Development Partners (World Bank, and Asian Development
Bank).
v) Public-Private Partnership - support to and from Private Sector; Education
Foundations, NGOs, and Communities. It has been estimated that private
sector is contributing 0.7 per cent of GNP in education. Government is thus encouraging the role of private sector in education and providing them with a
package of incentives and support.
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