RAWALPINDI, Nov 25: Large disparities between provinces, urban and rural areas and rich and poor households are at the heart of Pakistan’s slow progress in basic education, says the “2009 Education for All Global Monitoring Report” released by Unesco on Tuesday.

The report, “Overcoming inequality: why governance matters” portrays a dismal picture of education in Pakistan and says the country is projected to have 3.7 million children out of school in 2015. “Both suffer from weak governance and high levels of inequity in finance and provision. Pakistan still enrolls only 80 girls for every 100 boys,” it says.

The government with support of donors has embarked on a range of public-private partnership projects aimed at addressing long-standing problems in access and equity. However, the problems are acute and Pakistan’s net enrolment ration is 73 per cent for boys and 57 per cent for girls.

Low-fee private schools figure prominently in the strategy of public-private partnership which aims at addressing the challenges of education access, quality and equity. A recent policy paper quoted by the report spelled out the premise underpinning the current policy framework under which the government has officially recognised that the public sector on its own lacks all the necessary resources and expertise to effectively address and rectify low education indicators.

Although equity concerns have figured in the design of public-private partnerships, experience in Punjab illustrates just how difficult it can be to achieve more equitable outcomes.

Provinces such as the Punjab that are already in a stronger position in terms of education can benefit more because they have the possibility to recruit qualified staff, have more potential NGO and private sector partners, and are a priority client for most donors.

Notwithstanding the international attention Pakistan’s public-private partnership programme is receiving as a potential model for other countries to follow, the school voucher programme reaches only 10,000 students. This is in a country with 2.7 million boys and 4.1 million girls out of school. Lack of transport, security problems and poor housing in the remote areas form a major deterrent to equitable deployment of teachers, especially women.

The report took into account the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) announced in 2003, called “Accelerating Economic Growth and Reducing Poverty: The Road Ahead” while linking its relevance to achieving the goal of ‘Education for All. Social protection is identified as a central priority but programme implementation has been dogged by institutional fragmentation, inadequate financing and poor targeting, points out the report.

Around 10 per cent of poor households in one study reported taking children out of school and putting them to work as a result of high levels of poverty. Secondly, ill health, unemployment and natural disasters are a recurring theme in the lives of the poor, often leading to children being taken out of school.

The report listed the initiatives under the PRSP including federal government’s stipends to girls in middle schools from poor districts, provincial stipend programmes, free textbooks for poor students who attend government schools, pilot child support programme, Tawana Pakistan project, a school-feeding programme aimed at improving health, nutrition and enrolment, and non-formal education provision for vulnerable children, and comments. “The list is impressive but it also highlights a series of problems.”

Pointing out the problems, the report says the programme overlapped in their intended scope with uncoordinated financing and delivery modes via federal or provincial government, quasi-governmental and non-governmental organisations.

Coordination is lacking among bodies responsible for implementation, including the ministries of education, labour, social welfare and special education and science and technology along with the National Technical and Vocational Education Commission. Many initiatives are experiments or relatively small in scale.