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capacity. Active, provincial legislation and policies in education, curriculum, and social
protection, are strong features of this phase as is the review and upgrading of the next
generation sector plans across provinces. This period has witnessed new consensus based
arrangements across provinces and federal government for the sector with respect to standards,
curriculum principles and data protocols on key indicators to be reported nationally and
globally. Local governments have been installed (2014-2016) backed by legislation with varying
levels of responsibility towards education from province to province e.g. District Education
Authorities established in 2016 in Punjab are given multiple powers to oversee school
education. This period is also coinciding with preparation for the third General Elections
scheduled for mid-2018; where political parties will be asked to take stock of their promises for
education written in their manifestoes. The results of the multi-dimensional poverty index
(2016) reveals reduction in overall poverty levels but also high levels of persistent poverty in
many districts/provinces of Pakistan making girls most vulnerable among the poorest/poor
quartiles. The call for Education Emergency has become a repeated one by
politicians/governments alike. Two major nationwide education campaigns continued during
this phase viz. Alif Ailaan for transforming education in Pakistan as a unique alliance and Ilm
Ideas II, searching for innovations to accelerate learning and governance through technologies
and traditional means, funded by DFID.
Each provincial government has vigorously crafted and refined their respective sector plans
setting targets for access by sub-sector(ECE to Secondary, Non-formal and TVET), quality, equity
(gender, geography, income and disadvantaged groups) governance with cross cutting attention
to gender, ICTs, emergencies and public private partnerships. There is a principled focus on child
centered pedagogies, teacher education reforms and use of technologies to assist in real time
monitoring for better teacher attendance, rationalization, financial reforms and sector
performance. These ESPs together with the right to education acts for 25 A in each province
form the frameworks for sub-national planning and budgeting and support donor compliance
norms on equity, systems strengthening and evidence based targets. Major donors supporting
Pakistan 33 ’s education sector include; DFID, World Bank, USAID, Global Partnership for
Education (GPE) EU, CIDA supported by UNICEF, UNESCO , INGOs, new private sector
foundations (Open Society, Dubai Cares etc.).
Recent reform efforts have aimed to improve the teaching cadre in the country34
Improving teaching provision remains one of the most effective means of improving educational
quality worldwide. It is widely recognized that poor quality of teaching is the most likely culprit
resulting in low schooling quality within Pakistan (Dundar et al. 2014, Aslam and Rawal, 2015).
The government of Pakistan’s increased emphasis on improving educational quality has
centered on several reform efforts aimed at improved teaching quality. These have ranged from
initiatives aimed at improved recruitment, more effective deployment, increased accountability
and efforts aimed at reforming teacher training specifically at the pre-service level.
Teacher recruitment reforms have tended to focus on those aimed at revised hiring policies
(hiring better qualified teachers with minimum qualifications), strengthening merit-based
33 KP Education Sector Plan 2015-2020
Punjab Education Sector Plan 2014-2020
Balochistan Education Sector Plan 2013-2017
Sindh Education Sector Plan 2014-2018
34 Draws heavily from Aslam et al. (2016)