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among children from economically poor families. A related challenge is poor quality of education
in the early primary grades. In most instances, student performance is evaluated in higher
grades so that early signs of learning shortfalls are ignored.
The rich-poor gap in learning outcomes should be closed. In many OIC countries, there are
growing wealth gaps in student achievement. This implies significant inequality in access to
quality education. Although poverty has declined in many OIC countries and most children are
in school, educational opportunities are far from being equal. There is still a considerable socio-
economic gap in learning. Learning gaps are largest for children from poor families even in
countries where the overall level of learning is not high. This is partly because the quality of
mainstream government schools in rural locations remains very poor and often only marginally
better than alternatives such as madrasahs. Improving the performance of these schools is a key
challenge.
Pro-poor education models should be carefully studied and documented. Detailed statistical
analysis of secondary and primary school student achievement data shows that family income
still exerts a significant influence on student performance. In all four country case studies --
Nigeria, Jordan, Pakistan and Malaysia, children from economically poorer backgrounds have
lower test scores. However, only a small number of countries have schools that succeed in
providing quality education to children from poor families. This includes one-teacher non-
formal schools run by the NGO, BRAC, in South Asia and the UNHCR schools in Jordan catering
to Syrian refugee children. There are possibly other examples of inexpensive and innovative
education service delivery within the OIC that improve student performance. But existing
models of pro-poor education service delivery remains under-studied, limiting the scope for
replication in other OIC countries. Equally, community led and home-grown initiatives for
promoting provision of quality education and improve learning outcomes need to be explored
considering that many existing pro-poor related interventions are often externally driven and
have tended to have limited impact. Comprehensive evaluations of the community-based
initiatives and interventions can also help in identifying relevant interventions that work best
in different contexts and locations for effective provision of quality education for the poor. Of
particular relevance is the institution of madrasahs which often operate in non-formal setting,
outside the purview of the state. While madrasahs can be an important partner in educating
children from poor families in Muslim communities, reforming and regulating these madrasahs
remain an important challenge. There is an OIC-wide evidence gap on madrasah education.
Increasing the supply of private schools need to go hand in hand with greater affordability.
In many OIC countries such as Jordan, Nigeria and Pakistan, private schools are on the rise as
alternatives to government schools. A variety of education Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)
have also emerged within the OIC with differing owners, managers and financiers and with
varying models focusing on learning outcomes, quality, access and equity. PPPs can play an
important role in educational delivery in OIC countries. Existing reviews of the evidence on PPPs
findmixed evidence of the extent to which the evaluated PPPmodels have improved educational
quality and learning outcomes but more positive evidence of improved enrolments through
some PPP initiatives. While in some OIC countries for-profit schools are found to offer better
quality education, they are not always affordable. This is an important source of inequality in
the education sector and risks widening the rural-urban gap in learning outcomes. Policies
should be in place to help defray direct costs of private school enrolment through scholarship
schemes or vouchers. Measures should be also in place to address spatial inequality in the
concentration of private schools, particularly the issue of urban-bias in location choice.