Pakistan International Peace & Human Rights Organization
Nindo Shaher District Badin Sindh Pakistan

In 1989 Pakistan had a population of 110 million;in 1996 the population was estimated to be 134 million and growing at a rate of almost 3 percent a year. In 1996, gross national product (GNP) per capita was $480. Women aged 15�44 bore an average of 5.6 live children. In 1996 the infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births was 88. Balochistan, Pakistan�s largest and least developed province, contains only 5 percent of the country�s population, with the majority of its inhabitants widely scattered in rural areas. North-West Frontier Province, the smallest province, is home to 12 percent of Pakistan�s people and is densely inhabited. It has much better road and transportation systems than Balochistan. The two provinces share Islamic religious traditions, but each has a distinctive mix of ethnic and tribal groups that play critical roles in defining gender roles and the patterns of family and individual lives. The status of women is considerably worse in South Asia than in most of the rest of the world, and within South Asia, Pakistan has one of the worst records in female health and education. According to the 1981 population census,* 1.8 percent of rural women were literate in Balochistan and 3.8 percent in North-West Frontier Province. The World Health Organization estimated the maternal mortality rate in 1990 at 3.4 per 1,000 live births. With 108 men for every 100 women, Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world where men outnumber women.

Women�s reported share of the formal labor force is very low�13 percent�compared with 35 percent for all developing countries. However, this figure does not fully take into account women working in the informal sector. Women�s productive contribution to the economy goes unrecognized as most of their work is unpaid. While a minority of women, mostly from upper-class families, have worked their way into high positions in the government and have become doctors, scientists, and business owners, most Pakistani women lead lives of physical hardship involving long hours of nonpaying, tedious chores.

Tribal customs in both Balochistan and North- West Frontier Province regard women as objects of male ownership whose purity must be cautiously guarded. Rural women are confined to family compounds and local villages. Segregation of the sexes is one of the tools used to reinforce male domination and the marginalization of women. When PED began, public schools in both provinces were single-sex, run by separate male and female administrations.

Strengthening Public Primary Schools

Poor management of primary education was a fundamental weakness in both provinces. Problems included absenteeism, corruption, internal politics, lack of accountability, selective enforcement of rules, poor-quality construction and maintenance, favoritism in personnel selection and resource allocation, and poor morale and work ethic of the civil service�especially primary teachers. Although 70 percent of students in the two provinces were in primary schools in 1989, only 40 percent of staff and 30 percent of education resources were dedicated to pri- 6 mary education. All education resources were managed by the directorates of education and schools. These centers were staffed by professionals whose expertise and interest were usually in secondary and higher education. Primary education teachers had low pay and low status. PED adopted a strategy of creating and strengthening institutions rather than reforming institutions. The reasoning was that new primary institutions would protect primary education resources more effectively than existing institutions with vested interests in secondary schools and colleges. With this objective, directorates of primary education were created to do the following: 1) upgrade the management and financial resources for primary education, 2) center attention on primary-level problems, 3) support innovation and initiatives, and 4) attract competent teachers by raising the economic and social value of primary school educators.

Resources were diverted from existing education directorates to create the directorates of primary education, and that created resistance to the new institutions. The Senior Educational Staff Association, a union of senior-level male administrators who were secondary-level educators, successfully opposed establishing a directorate of primary education in Balochistan from 1989 to 1993. In North-West Frontier Province, the directorate was created rapidly but suffered passive resistance and a rigid, ruleoriented bureaucracy that inhibited innovation and made planning and decision-making arduous. The autonomy of the directorates of primary education was compromised in the struggle to create them. For example, as PED began in both provinces, all staff above grade 11 initially reported to the directors of education and schools/secondary directorate, including managers for primary schools. Thus the highest ranking field staff that reported to the directorates

directorates of primary education were the learning coordinators�the fourth rung down from the district education officers who run all school operations at the district level. Despite great progress, professionalization of primary education specialists is not yet a reality. The district education officers are the field managers of primary schools and teachers, but they are often appointed for political reasons. Their loyalties and futures rest with the secondary, not the primary, directorates. To move up in the education hierarchy, many district education officers seek frequent transfers and move out of primary education. They perform according to their personal commitment and competence, and their authority is inconsistent and relies in part on political connections. The results at the school level are uneven. Unless the directorates of primary education and their district education officers� authority, autonomy, and professionalism are strengthened, the most capable educators will continue to avoid careers in primary institutions.

The directorates of primary education have developed an institutional identity and culture, and because they serve the majority of the student population, they have a natural grass-roots constituency. Despite their short histories, these institutions appear permanent. They control the education management information systems, which collect and manage the flow of information from semiannual school censuses (begun in 1990) to district and provincial offices. Controlling the information systems gives the primary directorates unique power. The powerful teachers unions now have a stake in the continuity of the directorates, since directorates have control over increases in schools and teachers� posts and upgrading the status of primary teachers and managers. Donors (e.g., the World Bank, UNICEF, the German Technical Cooperation Agency, and the European Union) are all solidly behind stronger, dedicated primary institutions and might resist sector investments if these institutions were dismantled.

The greatest threat to the new directorates is ineffectiveness. If they are sustained because they pose no threat to the authority of the secondary education establishment, they will become resources for cronyism and dumping grounds for the least capable educators. The directorates have not yet reformed teacher training, supervision, performance, and promotion. They are not systematically improving and implementing curricular changes and instructional materials. They have not solved the quandary of district-level managers who are incompetent, corrupt, or uncommitted to primary education. These would be great challenges for strong institutions with solid resource bases. They are positively daunting for young,weak institutions struggling to control resources and attract capable staff.

Creating New Schools

Under PED, more than 2,100 new girls� schools were opened in the two provinces�a 70 percent increase in less than five years. Despite this impressive increase, gender differentials in proximity and access to schools persist. More than two thirds of school-age girls are not in school. Given the limited options for girls, many of those who are enrolled face crowded classrooms. Pupil�teacher ratios in girls� schools are substantially higher (44:1) than in boys� schools (23:1).

�A School Is Not a Building�

PED�s objective was equity of school access. Because about 80 percent of PED grant funds were dedicated to construction, one condition was that the ratio of girls� schools built to boys� schools built was at least 3 to 2. But the provincial governments did not meet that condition. (Table 2 tracks the respective increases in schools in Balochistan from 1989 through 1994.) As PED ended, only 16 percent of new school construction in Balochistan was for girls, and only 40 percent in North-West Frontier Province. This resistance to redressing gender imbalance has persisted. PED has been sustained in its entirety in Balochistan by the World Bank. To respond to current provisions of the World Bank loan, the government of Balochistan has declared that any school with a girl enrolled is a �mixed� school and thus can be included in the count of girls� schools.Using this formula, Balochistan can claim that almost half of schools constructed were for girls. This still fails to meet the loans provisions. Furthermore, the mixed schools are all run by the boys� school administration, thus supporting gender discrimination in allocation of resources and power. These mixed schools represent no progress either, since research showed years ago that many boys� schools include some girls.

The number of girls� schools with buildings at the beginning of the PED Program was small in Balochistan; afterward, school buildings for girls almost quadrupled. Perhaps as a consequence of this striking multiplication, most stakeholders are under the optimistic but erro- neous impression that the government is aggressively building schools for girls. Although the girls� schools are disappointingly few, each new girls� building sends a salient message of commitment to girls� education. Furthermore, because of the Community Support Program approach in Balochistan, most girls� schools ostensibly are or will be built in response to community demand. For a limited investment that did not satisfy PED requirements, the provincial government has gotten positive press around the world and high visibility at home for its commitment to girls� schools. Construction. Construction absorbed as much as 80 percent of PED investment. As figure 2 shows, construction was not equitable and did not meet the terms of agreement between Pakistan and USAID. The bulk of resources went to boys� schools. In both provinces senior officials for the directorates of primary education remarked that if they could start over, they might invest a smaller proportion of the funds in construction. �We learned,� said one official, �that a school is not a building.� PED reforms were incomplete: gender ratios continued to be biased against girls, and special interests continued to influence school investments. Nevertheless, conditionalities and USAID�s engineering assistance resulted in more schools, of better quality construction, being built where they were needed, as well as more rational allocation of resources for repair, maintenance, and salaries for teachers and guards.

Monitoring. To ensure that teachers were paid and schools were built and maintained where students were underserved, data from education management information systems were overlaid on demographic and geographic data in geographic information systems. These layered maps of terrain, populations, schools, and communities show at a glance where concentrations of girls and boys lack nearby schools. These information systems have institutionalized a planning process that matches construction sites to concentrations of school-age children. They have also monitoredstudent enrollments to further minimize the phenomenon of �ghost� schools and teachers� schools built but never used and teachers who were paid but never showed up to teach. PED eliminated hundreds of such schools and teachers� posts.

Policy and Program Initiatives To Increase Female Teachers In Rural Communities

In cultures where women�s purity is highly valued, kidnap and rape are frequent and effective threats that intimidate women and restrict their mobility and performance of duties outside the domestic sphere of their families.Female teachers encounter very real obstacles to living and working in rural villages unless they are permanent local residents and live with their families. They are frightened to travel to their rural posts or to leave the shelter of the school once they are there. Besides dangers on the road, teachers who commute also face travel costs, which may consume a disproportionate percentage of their salaries.* In communities that do not offer living facilities in a safe family compound, some female teachers live in social isolation with no viable community role and status, while others are pressured to marry men in the community who regard their salary and education as resources to be won. Finally, female teachers in rural posts cannot look to a career ladder or professional future. For all these reasons and more, female teachers in rural villages who are not in their hometowns often request and are granted transfers or temporary postings to places closer to district headquarters. Some of these postings are arranged because teachers are confronting the problems described above. Others are arrangedbecause teachers accept posts they have no intention of filling on a permanent basis and have connections to ensure that they never take up residence in the post to which they were assigned. These practices leave rural schools empty but teaching positions encumbered and salaries unavailable. Thus, schools whose teachers are detained elsewhere cannot recruit new teachers.

LESSONS LEARNED

1. Commitment to educating girls, communicated consistently by diverse leaders through multiple channels to a wide range of audiences, appears to have been critical to broad increases in girls� education. Many obstacles to girls� education derive from gender-role expectations of families and policymakers. The clear shared goal of enrolling more girls in primary school, supported with programs, policy changes, and community and school-level investments, seems to have helped change social norms about schooling girls. It also aligned the efforts of stakeholders at every level of the educational system, from the secretary of education to fathers in isolated villages who know (even if they don�t agree) that schooling girls is important. It was the right goal for the time and the context. Urbanization and mass communication had intruded on traditional gender expectations even in remote communities, and families felt they must equip their daughters for the modern world. The momentum of this initiative is so broad that it appears sustainable even where good-faith performance by the government can be questioned, as is the case with the gender ratio of school construction in Balochistan.

2. Alignment toward a goal facilitates decentralization, community participation, and innovation. The latter two are probably necessary to achieve the magnitude of shifts in social norms required to change practices related to gender roles in traditional societies. The broad based buy-in to the goal led to sustained efforts that did not require direct management and in many instances constituted significant in-kind support for the PED initiative. Unless government and donors sabotage the process by reneging on commitments to the community, PED appears to have initiated a lasting shift in social norms and girls� access to education.

3. If there are no incentives for change, a program approach in an unchanged policy environment may not have a systemwide impact on the quality of education. Poor quality of schooling typically is more detrimental to girls� school participation than to boys�, because demand for girls� schooling is weaker and the changes in social norms are still fluid. PED progress on quality improvements was not negligible. But relative to the rapid and significant progress on increasing girls� enrollments, progress on quality was slow and is a potential threat to sustaining and advancing PED achievements.

PED catalyzed a revolution in ideas and actions to increase girls� participation in education. A revolution of similar magnitude is needed with regard to academic quality. Such a revolution probably will require similar strategic coordination of program and policy efforts. At PED�s inception there seems to have been awareness that teacher training was inadequate and quality was poor, but there was no vision of an alternative and no latent demand for it. There was no strategic interplay of USAID conditionalities, no policy dialog with counterparts, and no guidance by technical advisers about quality.

The most successful step toward improving educational quality was the informal advisory role to the national curriculum reform taken by a North-West Frontier Province technical adviser. It resulted in successful integration of a phonetic approach to Urdu instruction. The rest of the quality improvements have not been widely implemented or are substantively cosmetic, such as new materials in Balochistan and increased numbers of teachers whose certification training does not improve their teaching. The exceptions are the North-West Frontier Province Educational Assessment Program testing system and the formalization of kindergarten. These successes were strategically suited to the context; they were new initiatives adding to, rather than replacing, existing programs and thus did not face as much resistance as other efforts.

4. Policy emphasis on quality might have led to institutionalization of quality improvements, which in turn would contribute to the sustainability of gains in girls� access to schooling. PED succeeded in achieving a single goal increasing girls� access to schooling�by consistently pursuing it with every policy and program resource at hand. The PED approach to quality was different; it was heavy on program inputs, with little policy modification to create a context and incentive for change. USAID did not undertake a role in policy leadership, and in the absence of policy changes, school quality did not significantly improve. Over the long term, poor quality contributes to low persistence and completion rates, high dropout and repetition rates, and system inefficiencies. Absence of a vision and demand for better quality schooling, and competition for program resources, blunted efforts to improve quality.

5. Unrealistically high standards for teacher and student achievement do not lead to better performance. Instead, they appear to reinforce notions that girls are not capable and contribute to patterns of high dropout and repetition rates. Teacher-centered teaching methods and developmentally challenging curricula characterize education at every grade. Younger children, many of whom speak no Urdu, face the greatest frustration. Since girls are concentrated in the early grades, they suffer proportionately. Furthermore, many primary teachers have not mastered the material they teach. That ensures that many students will not learn it. Not surprisingly, these features of education in the two provinces result in high rates of student failure and thus widespread belief that many children cannot learn. It also results in a tolerance for high rates of dropouts and repetitions. Combined with cultural emphases on the limitations of females, failure and repetition undermine the self-efficacy of girls and their persistence in school.

6. Boys have benefited as much as or more than girls from PED�s program innovations and quality efforts. In absolute numbers, boys� schools increased significantly more than girls�. Community participation in education,pioneered by PED to get girls into school, also promises to improve quality, increase access,and reduce abuse of boys in schools. The success of PED is built on developing and strengthening primary education institutions, supplying more schools and teachers where they are needed, improving the teaching tools for primary schools, and increasing community participation in schools. All data, both quantitative and qualitative, show that these have directly benefited boys as much as or more than girls.

Gender discrimination leads to distortions supply and demand and limits the effectiveness and efficiency of strategies for system reform. Policy and program actions that require changes in gender role norms reduce these distortions. Historically, demand for girls� education was minimal, because traditional gender roles limited female mobility and life options. Now, modernization, population pressure, urbanization, and mass media are changing some aspects of gender roles, and demand for female education is strong.

Nonetheless, much gender discrimination remains,and it creates inefficiencies in the supply of and access to primary education. For example, harassment, intimidation, and community rejection underlie the inadequate supply of rural female teachers. Instead of challenging these gender inequities, the education system treats them as �givens,� fixed realitiesthat must be circumvented�for example,by supplying cars and drivers for rural female teachers. Circumventing gender discrimination rather than changing it sharply raises the costs female education and impedes its progress. Giving opportunities to women does not eliminate inefficiency unless gender discrimination diminishes. Powerless women with resources are targets of male opportunism. Some husbands, fathers, and brothers commandeer salaries and government benefits of women teachers, but at the same time interfere with their work. Time and again district officials and head teachers bemoaned the fact that some female teachers cannot perform because of personal problems. Supervisors did not havesolutions to their teachers� gender-role anxieties.

For the most part, PED did not directly address gender discrimination; educating girls was seen as enough of a social revolution. One notable exception was USAID�s insistence on the inclusion of women managers at every meeting. This action was significant because women managers are essential in these gender-segregated societies, and not just because of principles of equity. Men do not have access to enough information about women and girls to make informed policy and program decisions, and women in positions of authority serve as important role models for girls.

There is still a dearth of women in decisionmaking positions from the highest levels of the primary education establishment to the grass-roots level of village education committees. The female village education committees gave many women their first experiences in civil society. However, although the female committees have taken on significant responsibility for the operation of their schools, resources and authorities are firmly in the hands of the male committees.

8. Three-way partnerships (such as government �private sector�community, or government �donor�technical assistance) empower more stakeholders, facilitate innovation, and minimize deadlock better than two-way partnerships. For example, the government initiatives here failed twice to create community education committees. The Community Support Program initiative demonstrates a three-way partnership that works. Men and women of the villages give thought, time, and resources to school committees, projects, and teachers. NGOs bring community studies, strategic organizing, and transfer of expertise to give communities the wherewithal they need to begin a process of proactive civic participa- tion. Government brings the resources for sustainability and incentives to stimulate community investment. In light of the demonstrated success of the three-way model, perhaps as decentralizationproceeds, more resources will beshared among governments, NGOs, and communities.