The Determinants of Student Achievement in Government and Private Schools in Pakistan

This study is driven by some fundamental issues evolving in Pakistan’s educational set-up. In the past few decades, the country has been experiencing what can only be termed a dramatic revolution in education provision. There has been an explosion of private schooling mostly at the primary but at higher levels as well and, somewhat surprisingly, private schooling cannot be relegated the status of an urban èlite phenomenon alone [Andrabi, et al. (2002)]. This has taken the form of many poor households and those in rural areas opting to send their children to fee-paying private schools rather than the non-fee charging government schools. This transformation of the education sector has generated many concerns among which the ‘equity’ issue has been raised to the fore. The unprecedented growth of cheap private schooling has also raised questions regarding the role of these institutions in the delivery of education, the question of parental ‘choice’1 as well as the future of government educational policy

Helpdesk Report: The Teacher Labour Market in Pakistan

RLOsThis report undertakes a rapid review of existing literature and summarises some key evidence on the teacher labour market in South Asia. It specifically focuses on salaries and conditions of teachers in the low-fee private sector in contexts where these sectors are a significant part of the education system. In doing so, this review aims to help inform the development of DFID’s policy position on the minimum wage legislation in Pakistan as it may pertain to teachers, specifically in the private schooling sector (specifically the low-fee sector and among other non-state actors).ESRC-DFI

What can Teachers do to Raise Pupil Achievement?

Improving weak teaching may be one of the most effective means of raising pupil achievement. However, teachers. classroom practices and the teaching .process. may matter more to student learning than teachers. observed résumé characteristics (such as certification and experience). There may also be important differences in teacher characteristics across government and private schools which may help explain the large documented public-private achievement differences often found in studies. This paper delves into the black-box representing .teaching. to uncover the teacher characteristics and teaching practices that matter most to pupil achievement. This is done using unique, school-based data, collected in 2002-2003 from government and private schools from one district in Punjab province in Pakistan. The data allow exploitation of an identification strategy that permits the matching of students. test scores in language and mathematics to the characteristics of teachers that teach those subjects. Within pupil (across subject rather than across time) variation is used to examine whether the characteristics of different subject teachers are related to a students. mark across subjects. The data is also unique in asking all subject teachers questions pertaining to their teaching practices and these, often unobserved, process variables are included in achievement function estimates. Our pupil fixed-effects findings reveal that the standard résumé characteristics of teachers do not significantly matter to pupil achievement. Perversely, however, teachers are found to be rewarded for possessing these characteristics highlighting the highly inefficient nature of teacher pay schedules. Our findings also show that teaching process variables matter significantly to student achievement. There are important differences across school-types.teacher characteristics, pupil fixed-effects achievement, government and private middleschools, Pakistan.

Education, employment and earnings in Pakistan

Gender gaps in educational access, schooling quality and labour market outcomes are pervasive in Pakistan. This brief discusses the findings of three recent studies in Pakistan that highlight the role of education in improving individual productivity, increasing earnings, bringing people out of poverty and providing a pathway to gender equality in the labour market. The papers note the policy implications of the research both for education and labour market policy

Rates of return to education by gender in Pakistan

Differential labour market returns to male and female education are one potential explanation for large gender gaps in education in Pakistan. We empirically test this explanation by estimating private returns to education separately for male and female wage earners. This paper contributes to the literature by using a variety of methodologies (Ordinary Least Squares, Heckman correction, 2SLS and household fixed effects) in order to consistently estimate economic returns to education. Earnings function estimates reveal a sizeable gender asymmetry in economic returns to education, with returns to women's education being substantially and statistically significantly higher than men's. However, a decomposition of the gender wage gap suggests that there is highly differentiated treatment by employers. We conclude that the total labour market returns are much higher for men, despite returns to education being higher for women. This suggests that parents may have an investment motive in allocating more resources to boys than to girls within households

Non-state education provision; access and quality for the marginalised

This report undertakes a rapid review of some recent, high quality syntheses and reports to summarise the evidence on the effectiveness of different types of non-state schools in reaching the marginalised and providing quality education to them. Non-state provision has risen dramatically over the last few decades especially across South and West Asia and the Latin America and Caribbean region and provides opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. The all-encompassing term ‘non-state’ constitutes a spectrum of providers with different characteristics, scope and scale. Overall, the evidence is indicative of potential improvements in learning outcomes in certain types of non-state provision but this is caveated by the very low overall learning outcomes across education systems, as well as by the extent to which non-state provision is aligned with human rights. There is evidence of certain types of non-state providers being able to reach the marginalised and disadvantaged more effectively but questions exist with regards to their sustainability. Whilst different types of arrangements may work in different contexts, the critical factor remains the governments’ ability to both foster an enabling environment but also combine it with effective legislation, monitoring and regulation to ensure quality education provision

The relative effectiveness of government and private schools in Pakistan: are girls worse off?

Recent evidence from Pakistan points to significant pro-male bias within households in the allocation of education expenditures. This raises two important questions: Is less spent on enrolled girls than boys through differential school-type choice for the two sexes, for example through a greater likelihood of sending boys to fee-charging private schools? And, if indeed this is the case, are girls thereby condemned to lower quality schooling, on average, than boys? By asking these questions, this paper makes three contributions to the literature. Firstly, this is one of a very few studies in Pakistan to explore the question of the relative effectiveness of public and private schools despite there being an unprecedented expansion of fee-charging private schools in the last two decades. Secondly, unlike existing papers which focus on primary schooling, this study looks at potential learning gaps by school-type for students in their last year of middle school (grade 8), very near their transition to secondary schooling. Thirdly, it exploits unique, purposively-collected data from government and private school students and thus, in estimating achievement production functions, is able to control for a number of variables typically ‘unobserved’ by researchers. The findings reveal that boys are indeed more likely to be sent to private schools than girls within the household, so that differential school-type choice is an important channel of differential treatment against girls. Private schools are also found to be of better quality – they are more effective than government schools in imparting mathematics and literacy skills. Girls lose out vis a vis boys in terms not only of lower within-household educational expenditures but also in terms of the quality of schooling accessed

Parental Education and Child Health - Understanding the Pathways of Impact in Pakistan

This study investigates the relationship between parental schooling on the one hand, and child health outcomes (height and weight) and parental health-seeking behaviour (immunisation status of children), on the other. While establishing a correlational link between parental schooling and child health is relatively straightforward, confirming a causal relationship is more complex. Using unique data from Pakistan, we aim to understand the mechanisms through which parental schooling promotes better child health and health-seeking behaviour. The following ‘pathways’ are investigated: educated parents’ greater household income, exposure to media, literacy, labour market participation, health knowledge and the extent of maternal empowerment within the home. We find that while father's education is positively associated with the 'one-off' immunisation decision, mother's education is more critically associated with longer term health outcomes in OLS equations. Instrumental variable (IV) estimates suggest that father's health knowledge is most positively associated with immunisation decisions while mother's health knowledge and her empowerment within the home are the channels through which her education impacts her child's height and weight respectively.parental schooling, mother's health knowledge, father's health knowledge, media exposure, maternal empowerment, child health, immunisation, Pakistan

Education gender gaps in Pakistan: is the labour market to blame

Differential labor market returns to male and female education are one potential explanation for large gender gaps in education in Pakistan. We empirically test this explanation by estimating private returns to education separately for male and female wage earners. This article contributes to the literature by using a variety of methodologies (ordinary least squares, Heckman correction, two‐stage least squares, and household fixed effects) in order to estimate economic returns to education. The latest nationally representative data - the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (2002) - are used. Earnings function estimates consistently reveal a sizable gender asymmetry in economic returns to education, with returns to women's education being substantially and statistically significantly higher than men's. The return to an additional year of schooling ranges between 7% and 11% for men and between 13% and 18% for women. There are also large, direct returns to women's education at low levels of schooling, and the education‐earnings profile is more convex for women than for men. However, a decomposition of the gender wage gap (into the component "explained" by differing male and female endowments and the residual component) suggests that there is highly differentiated treatment by employers. We conclude that the total labor market returns are much higher for men, despite returns to education being higher for women. This suggests that parents may have an investment motive in allocating more resources to boys than to girls within households

Female autonomy and gender gaps in education in Pakistan

In this study we examine whether gender bias in education depends on the extent of female decision-making power. Household headship is used as a measure of female autonomy, with different types of households theorized to reflect varying degrees of female autonomy. Most female-headed-households in Pakistan are formed either because women are widowed or because husbands migrate. Women in male-headed-households are hypothesized to have least autonomy followed by married women heads whose migrant husbands may retain some decision-making power. Widow heads are hypothesized to have the greatest degree of autonomy among women in different households. The econometric findings suggest that married women heads gender-discriminate as much as male heads but that widow-heads have significantly lower bias against girls in enrolment decisions than male heads. The results also suggest that educated female heads gender differentiate less than both uneducated female heads and than male heads. The evidence suggests that households having better educated women with more independent status discriminate against the education of their daughters less than other households