LAHORE: The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has decided to establish the Private School Forum in Punjab to be replicated in other provinces to find ways to make low-fee private schools effective.

The forum will be responsible for organising and building the institutional capacity of a network or forum of private schools.

This was stated by USAID senior education advisor Tariq Khan while speaking at the inaugural session of a two-day conference on “Harnessing the potential of low-fee private schools” organised by USAID at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) on Tuesday.

The conference is part of the $300 million Improving Education Quality initiative of USAID which focused on improving learning, particularly reading skills at the primary level in Pakistan. Over 200 educators, academia, members of school associations and stakeholders attended the conference.

Mr Khan said that it was anticipated that the Private Schools Forum mechanism would work with the USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project to assist provincial governments in developing standards and accountability for private schools in provinces. He said ability to read was necessary for learning and inadequate reading skills lead to dropouts. He said there were currently over six million out-of-school children in Pakistan and many in schools had below-grade reading skills.

Until the late 1990s, he said, the private schools were largely perceived to be serving the wealthier urban population of the country. However, this perception changed when they started spreading rapidly in the rural areas and became more affordable to the middle and low-income groups. “According to recent estimates, approximately half of all children in urban centres and around one-third of all children in the rural areas attend private schools,” he said.

Tariq Khan said that it was surprising that despite having less-qualified, low-paid teachers, private sector students were performing well relatively to their public sector counterparts. Still, he said, the quality of education offered at most low-fee private schools needed improvement. In addition to supporting public schools, Mr Khan said USAID was also looking forward to working closely in the future with low-fee private schools and private school associations.

Earlier, LUMS Suleman Dawood School of Business dean Arif Nazir Butt said the university was planning to establish a School of Education to provide solutions to the issues faced by private schools especially low-cost private schools.

Speaking through video link, Prof Tahir Andrabi from Pomona College said that basic issue faced by the low-fee schools was investment. He said it was difficult for these schools to provide quality education in Rs200 to Rs400 per month.

USAID Chief of Party Pakistan Reading Project John Shumaker also spoke. In technical sessions, panelists from India, Bangladesh and Turkey shared best practices in education during the conference.