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villages leads to substantial improvements in enrolment with treatment villages experiencing
30 percentage point increase in enrolment for children within the target age group. In addition
to this, the authors find a 12 percentage point increase in enrolment amongst the older age
group. Similarly positive effects of the programme are found in relation to learning outcomes
with treatment villages enjoying test score increases of 0.67 standard deviations for pre-
enrolled children and of 2.01 standard deviations for those children who enrolled into the
schools as a result of the programme.
Nevertheless, the political landscape within which private schools and PPPs operate is very
charged with most government school teachers vehemently opposed to the privatization of
education and critics claiming that privatization has resulted in lowering the status of the
profession and resultant demotivation among those in the cadre (Aslam et al. 2016). Thus, the
educational landscape of the country involves many stakeholders with differing views and
incentives and provides both challenges and opportunities to the policy-makers involved.
The role of civil society & development partners
Civil society organizations (CSOs) across Pakistan have stood by as eager partners with the
government to complement and accelerate the efforts. CSOs have worked at three levels viz. i)
with the government in public sector state schools in various school improvement programs.
Here the access of CSOs has been negotiated at different levels formally through MOUs with the
government through three strands: a) philanthropy led school improvement by responsible and
generous citizens that may include backing of industry foundations which have been welcomed
by the government after verification of purpose, interventions, targets and outcomes with value
addition protocols. These models continue on a case to case basis with district and provincial
level MOUs in a decentralized setting; b) CSOs working as Implementing Partners (IPs) for large
or medium sized development partners (USAID, DFID, EU, UNICEF, Save the Children, Oxfam
etc.) that have access to government schools through an umbrella understanding between the
development agency under large/small multi-year projects with given interventions and
targets; and c) the large scale government organized NGOs (GO-NGOs) in the country such as the
Rural Support Programs(RSPs) across Pakistani provinces and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation
Fund (PPAF) also contract through a call for expression of interest CSOs, to become
implementation partners in government and/or low school improvement programs. These
different programs have led to a blossoming of innovations, tools and diversity of content, and ,
some with good results in teacher training across levels, governance through SMC capacity
building, action for gender equality , youth mobilization “Teach for Pakistan’ and tech enabled
initiatives etc. Did these lead to high end results? This question need rigorous research and in
some cases some impact research has also been undertaken in -built into various donor and
government funded projects.
ii) Through government financing /vouchers in education foundation funded schools
The Education Foundations (5) that began in 1992 in the post Jomtien reconnected to the Grant
in Aid schemes to non-state providers for education outreach to the most disadvantaged. All of
them have undergone reforms and work purely through PPPs under their own unique
legislation to expand their footprint for access, equity and quality through CSOs/private sector.
This is the most sustainable form of seeking partnerships with CSOS for education which is
targets and outcomes based. Punjab and Sindh Education Foundations are currently both active
and innovative scaling up their work to achieve large targets. Between the two more than 2