A n act of public good by definition is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. This means that there cannot be any costs or barriers preventing individuals from receiving the benefits of that good (non-excludable). The definition also implies that one person’s consumption of the good does not reduce the good’s availability to another consumer (non-rivalrous). Bearing in mind this definition, one can evaluate the failures of the public educational sector by questioning the applicability of the term ‘public’ when discussing government schools.

The costs that prohibit entry to a public good do not necessarily have to be financial, though it is indisputable that poverty is a primary cause of student dropouts, poor school attendance, and low levels of educational attainment. Barriers to entry and access can also take the form of informal social institutions that result in a systematic exclusion of certain groups based on social categories such as gender, caste, ethnicity or religion. For instance, in rural areas of Sindh and Balochistan, female attendance and enrollment in schools is significantly less than that of male students. These informal institutions — social norms, customs, traditions, patriarchy — impose restrictions on all forms of female mobility. In such communities where kinship and patriarchal networks are strongly pronounced, young girls leaving their homes and commuting to schools is considered a dishonourable act.

These restrictions are not limited to simply female students. Parents and community members also refrain from visiting the school and being actively involved in school affairs for a similar set of reasons. This absence of civic engagement and collective action is not an accidental failure, but a result of the informal, social institutions that have morphed these supposed ‘public’ spaces — particularly girls schools — into sacred spots of non-entry.

For example, as readily observed in rural areas of Sindh and Balochistan, a male parent will refuse to visit his daughter’s school, thereby entirely disengaging himself from her school activities and performance, precisely because it is a female domain. Thus to ensure the safety and security of girl students, it is considered inappropriate for males, including fathers, to enter the school. Yet the same social norms that have sanctified the premise of a girls school, also ironically restrict female parents from entering the school. Many mothers in such communities also state that they are forbidden from leaving their homes, and therefore cannot visit the school, even if requested to do so by teachers.

Therefore, the salient question that arises is who does have access to a girls’ government school? Girls’ schools are an especially unusual malformation of the concept of a ‘public’ space since not even one single group can claim full ownership or have a stake in the school. Rather than the public school belonging to the community, or in the case of a private school belonging to the particular group who are the paying members of the institution, the public schools in Pakistan essentially belong to no one.

Gender is not only the social category that functions as a barrier to entry. Religion, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, and class-caste are other such social categories that operate in a similar manner in Pakistan. In some areas, because of the rising trend of kidnappings and forced conversions of Hindu girls, families are forbidding their daughters from leaving the house and attending school. And for those who are in school, the religious intolerance within textbooks, mandated morning Islamic prayers and Islamiyat courses are all causes of concern for religious minorities who are finding it increasingly impossible to freely articulate their own religious identity.

Aside from social institutions, one cannot forget how poverty and transportation are further barriers to entry that families must overcome in order to send their children to school. Without readily available means of affordable transportation, parents who even desire further education for their daughters cannot do so as there is simply no institutionalised means by which a student can make the journey from her home to school and back.

One sees how access to spaces is socially determined by one’s gender, caste, ethnicity or religion, and further exacerbated by insufficient finances. One must note here that the domain which may be ‘public’ for those belonging to one group may be entirely inaccessible to another. Therefore one space can operate in multiple distinct ways simultaneously, and should be evaluated in terms of its multidimensional roles.

Recently published reports state that Pakistan, currently, has the second highest rate of children out-of-school in the world. It is the responsibility of all tiers of governments and education researchers to systematically identify and address these social, cultural and economic institutions that operate as barriers to entry and access in the public education sector. It is therefore imperative that policy-making for educational reform incorporates the existing, on ground realities of local informal institutions, and how they operate to impede educational development in Pakistan.

This writer researches educational development issues in Pakistan.

anyahosain@gmail.com