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Public Private Partnerships for education provision in Pakistan:

How does Punjab Education Foundation address equity?

By Muhammad Naeem

For

Conference on Globalization, Regionalization and Privatization

in and of Education in Asia

28-29 September, 2012, Kathmandu, Nepal

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Title:

Public Private Partnerships for education provision in Pakistan: How does Punjab

Education Foundation address equity?

Abstract

This paper looks at the public private partnerships implications in the schooling sector in

Pakistan, a country that is seriously behind schedule in achieving the Millennium

Development Goals. As many developing countries are striving to meet Education for All

(EFA) targets set for 2015, so there is a debate that traditional modes of education provision

may not be adequate to achieve international objectives and Public Private Partnerships

(PPPs) is being considered as a remedy in this regard. In Pakistan, since early 1990s, PPPs

have been regarded as the anchor of Pakistan education strategy to provide education and

remove inequalities. The phenomenal rise of the private education is due to the failure of state

schools to provide adequate schooling. Private providers of education are regarded as an

alternative but the flawed partnership pattern is a growing concern. This paper combines data

from documents and semi-structured interviews to unpack the issues surrounding the PPPs

implications in the provision of education by multiple providers in a developing country like

Pakistan. In this context, educational provision to the urban poor in Punjab province has been

conceptualized in relation to the working of Punjab Education Foundation in Punjab

province. The analysis of Education Voucher Scheme (EVS) has been carried out to address

the equity issue. The findings from this paper indicate that there is a major shift in the mind-

set of the government to have partnership; however the potential of the private sector has not

been utilized properly. The EVS is a challenging initiative but only limited to select urban

slums. More context-based vigorous effort, commitment and sustained partnerships are

required with the private sector to address equity. Moreover, this paper informs policy

makers of the complexities intrinsic to implementing PPPs for educational provision that may

be present in multifarious educational contexts.

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1. Introduction

Education service provision is gaining the attention of the world governments more than ever

before. As many developing countries are striving to meet Education for All (EFA) targets set

for 2015 (UNESCO, 2010), traditional modes of education provision may not be adequate to

achieve international objectives (Farah & Rizvi, 2007). Provision of education is still not

universal and difficulties in accessing the education still remain an area of concern.

Challenges exist not only in the provision of formal education, but also in meeting the needs

of out of school children across the world (UNESCO, 2010). Despite the effects of

globalizing trends, governments across the world still exercise considerable control over their

national education systems (Scholte, 2000). In the midst of this state of affairs, Public Private

Partnerships (PPPs) has attracted the attention of the international players and national

governments for its potential to address the issues of access and equity and include those who

are otherwise unable to obtain an education.

This paper is an attempt to review the implications of PPPs policy and practices in Pakistan

and the role of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) in addressing the issue of equity by

assisting the private sector in Punjab province through its various programmes especially the

Education Voucher Scheme (EVS). Various factors contribute for undertaking this project.

Firstly, the study of PPPs is an important concept in international education and development

literature. The donors (multilateral and bilateral) are emphasising the Government of Pakistan

to adopt PPPs policies in order to achieve the goals of Education for All (Patrinos et al.,

2009). Moreover, an understanding has been developed in Pakistan that without the

participation of private sector, the challenges of education provision are difficult to meet

(ibid.).

2. PPPs and new perspectives on the provision of education

The term public‐private partnerships (PPPs) have many different definitions, especially

across different sectors. It broadly refers to an agreement whereby a public service is

provided to the people of a state in cooperation with the private sector (Corry et al., 1997 &

Figure-I). In the modern world, in the development and the policy arenas, it is thought that

PPPs are a move to gain efficiency and improvement in a given set of circumstances (Green,

2005). Moreover, the Canadian Council for PPPs ( as cited in LaRocque, 2008: 8) defines

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PPPs as “a cooperative venture between public and private sectors, built on the expertise of

each other, that best meets clearly defined public needs through the appropriate allocation of

resources, risks and rewards”. However, there is little agreement on any more precise

definition than one put forth by Collins and Hansson (2000), that in PPPs, the public and

private sectors bring different strengths and share responsibilities, resources, risks and

ownership of the product or service in question (cited in Farah & Rizvi, 2007).

The provision of educational services at the beginning of 21st century is still a major

challenge for most of the developing countries of the world (UNESCO, 2010). The

governments alone have been unable to provide education to its rapidly growing populations.

So, there is a policy shift from a single provider approach towards a multi-provider approach

(Aly, 2007). There has been a growing interest in non-state provision of education which is

education services provided by NGOs, faith-based organizations, private for-profit schools,

private non-profit schools, community schools and philanthropic schools has grown as the

search for alternative and innovative ways to reach EFA goals (UNESCO, 2007).

3. Equity Agenda and urban poor

Ainscow et al. (2006) draws upon the four forms of equity which are quite relevant in the

today’s world:

First: Equity as equality – This implies that fairness will be achieved if everyone is treated

in the same (i.e. equal) way.

Second: Equity as minimising divergence across social groups – This means reducing the

gaps between the outcomes achieved by the most advantaged and least advantaged social

groups. An important qualifier here is that any gaps should be reduced by improving the

achievements of the less advantaged, not by lowering the achievements of the most

advantaged.

Third: Equity as achieving a common standard – This requires the setting of minimum

levels (sometimes referred to as ‘floor targets’), that all groups of learners are expected to

achieve, for example, a basic level of literacy and numeracy competence.

Fourth: Equity as meeting the needs of all individuals – This suggests that fairness

requires differential treatment in order to take account of student diversity.

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In terms of equity, the children from poor areas and slums face major difficulties (UNESCO,

2009). Poverty tends to focus on rural areas and there is not much data available on urban

poverty. The World Bank Report (2009) indicates that the urbanization will define the 21st

century because for the first time in history, more than half the world’s population lives in

urban areas. Over 90 percent of urbanization is taking place in the developing world.

Moreover, an estimated one billion people currently live in urban slums in developing

countries.

4. Education in Pakistan: Equity Concern

Why has the public–private partnership gained a place in the educational policy discourse in

Pakistan? The answer lies in understanding the national needs and international pressures on

the country. Pakistan is a federation of four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the

Khayber Pakhtankhaw). It has a large and rapidly increasing population (estimated as

approximately as 180.71 million in 2011) of which one third lives in poverty (GoP, 2011).

Literacy rate is almost 58 per cent. Literacy remains much higher in urban areas than in rural

areas and much higher for men than for women. Province wise data suggest that Punjab leads

with 60 percent literacy followed by Sindh with 59 percent, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 50

percent and Balochistan with 41 percent. Pakistan’s education sector faces challenges of

access, quality, equity along with governance.

The term ‘public–private partnerships’ was introduced into the policy discourse in Pakistan in

the early 1990s (MoE, 2004). The 1992 Education Policy recommended the ‘disinvestment of

public institutions in which inefficiencies are high and which are not turning out quality

product’, and increased investment by the private sector (MoE, 1992: 56). The education

policy of 1998 stipulated ‘accelerating the human resource development of the country

through partnerships among NGO, private and government sector’ (MoE, 1998: 135). This is

also reiterated by much publicised Education Sector Reform Plan (2001).

5. PEF as a manifestation of PPPs

In the province of Punjab, the PEF was created in 1991 through an Act of Parliament (MoE,

2004. The renewed interest was born after 2001 when it was restructured under the Punjab

Education Foundation Act of 2004 for the promotion of education with the objective of

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encouraging and supporting the efforts of the private sector in providing education to the

poor, through public private partnership (PEF, 2010). The vision of the PEF is to:

“Promote quality education through public private partnership, encourage and

support the effort of private sector through technical and financial assistance,

innovate and develop new instruments and enable private educational institutions to

champion wider educational opportunities at affordable cost to the poor”.

(PEF, 2010)

In order to achieve this dream, the PEF has launched a series of programmes as mentioned

above; however, I will restrict myself to the scope and limitations of EVS programme.

Presently, the PEF has initiated four programmes as under:

1. Foundation Assisted Schools (FAS)

In FAS, the PEF adopts whole private school and pays fee of every child @ Rs. 400/- ($4).

2. Education Voucher Scheme (EVS) i.e. cash transfer to the private schools

The Education Voucher Scheme is a cash transfer programme to provide education to

children with weak educational prospects of marginalized and less affluent areas in urban

slums and shanty towns of Punjab.

3. New School Programme (NSP)

The New School Programme is related with opening of new private schools in low literacy

districts of Punjab and a special financial incentive is given to private education providers in

this regard.

4. Continuous Professional Development Programme (CPDP) of Teachers

CPDP deals with the capacity building of teachers of the private schools. The PEF has

initiated various training programmes because the low-cost private educational institutions

not only lack proper physical infrastructure but are also deficient in human capital in the

shape of qualified teachers.

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6. Vision of PEF & EVS

With a population of 81.33 million, the Punjab province comprises almost 56% of the

population of Pakistan (Government of Pakistan, 2009-10) and it has 60 percent literacy.

The EVS is introduced to increases enrolment and improve quality in education in poor areas

using accountability mechanism that link increase in access with the quality measures

(Patrinos et al., 2009:21). It is somewhat similar to the FAS. In FAS, the PEF gives each

child in the age cohort of 4-17 a non-redeemable voucher valuing Rs. 400/- ($ 4) which is

paid directly to the school. The child’s parents have the freedom to select the school of their

choice from amongst the institutions that have been accredited by the PEF (PEF, 2010). The

parents have also the option to enrol their child in a school charging a higher fee by topping

up, paying the school over and over the Voucher money that PEF disburses directly to the

school. The Foundation itself selects the schools which have the fee equal to the voucher

money. If the fee is less than the voucher money, even then the Foundation pays the full

voucher money to the school. The programme has so far focussed on urban slums, employing

the concept of self-targeting that everyone in the area is eligible to avail the service (ibid.). It

means that all the children of a household in the selected locality qualify for the voucher.

EVS programme started as a pilot project. The vouchers are non-cashable, non-tradable and

non transferable (Salman, 2009).

7. The Potential of EVS

EVS is serving the lower classes of society i.e. mostly to the families of labourers, hawkers

and jobless people. Salman (2009) is also of the view that the enhanced enrolment of the

school also attracts other non-EVS students. The overall increased enrolment of these schools

is as high as 100%. Moreover, this also increases the reputation of the school. Additional

amount of voucher is used by the school owners to invest in the school infrastructure,

although this is not mandatory as per the regulations of PEF. The EVS and non-EVS students

(self-financed) are subject to same levels of assessment. Their evaluation methods are same.It

has brought a 20-25% increase in the enrolment and no drop out has been reported during the

last 3 years.

The EVS was started in September, 2006 in Lahore district as a pilot project. Now it has been

expanded to 34 districts of the Punjab (There are total 36 districts in the Punjab). The number

of Partner Schools has increased from 8 Schools to 576 and the number of Vouchers to

140, 000 in 8 Phases in a period of 6 years. The government’s intentions behind the EVS

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seem to be quite noble. However, the question arises whether it is serving the poor sections of

the society. What are its implications under the broader PPPs policies in Pakistan? What are

issues latent in its expansion to serve the cause of equity? My research aims at exploring

these and other related themes.

8. Research Design

This Paper under took a case study of an organization called PEF. In this process, two

different data collection methods were employed i.e. semi-structured interviews and the

documentary analysis. The interviewees were six key officials working in education sector.

My research collated data from the different central and provincial government sources and

the PEF itself. The research questions were thus designed as following:

1. To what do extent the Government of Pakistan’s PPPs policies address the

challenge of equity in education?

2. How is the provincial Government of Punjab using PPPs through PEF for education

service provision to the urban poor?

3. To what extent has PEF been able to achieve equity through its EVS programme?

The official website of PEF (www.pef.edu.pk) contains most of the promotional material or

the very basic descriptions of its various programmes. Moreover, it contains some facts about

its establishment and the human resource employed. As the website was unable to provide me

a critical insight so documentary research became an important part of data collection

process. Kane (1995: 111) is of the view that various types of documents are useful for case

studies like “national statistics department, government information sources, international

As the policy documents and statistics from the ministries of education, finance and planning

& development of the national as well as the provincial government were central to my

research, I was careful to apply a critical approach when evaluating their accuracy. As Tellis

(1997) is of the view that data is not always reliable and most of the data sets and the results

are a manifestation of political aspirations and administration manipulations (Kane, 1995).

9. Findings and Analysis

Shift in the mind-set of the Government: The results so obtained from the documentary data

sets show that first there is a realization on the part of the government and now there is a

commitment that it alone cannot provide the education to the masses. Government has

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accepted the option of private sector to address equity. It is an important shift in the thinking

of the government.

Political Commitment: It is only the province of Punjab which showed more commitment to

PPPs and made the PEF an autonomous body headed by a political figure and also started

many programmes including the Voucher scheme.

Role of Bureaucracy: In the Punjab administrative culture which is still embedded in

colonial thought PPPs will only work if there is strong political commitment because there is

still tendency in bureaucratic set up to centralize the powers. Because of this tendency the

potential of the PPPs in Pakistan has not been fully tapped.

EVS Mechanism

So far EVS is concerned, it is a relatively new idea in Pakistan, and so far has not been

exclusively researched or evaluated in detail. As most of the projects’ assessments are based

on self-reporting or routine inspections so it becomes quite difficult to paint a true picture of

reality. There are certain gaps in the EVS mechanism. This is due to the fact that a real

partnership on such a scale is done for the first time in Pakistan.

Gender issues: The EVS programme is not gender-biased. Both of the sexes are being

catered under the scheme rather there is more emphasis on Girls’ students as currently 6014

girls are getting vouchers against 5986 number of vouchers for boys (Total: 12000 Vouchers,

Table:6 refers).

Targeting mechanism of EVS: There are certain loopholes in the selection of deserving

families for EVS. No clear cut criterion about the deservedness of a family is mentioned. ‘In

this regard PEF benefited from the previous surveys conducted by the Local Government and

Rural Development Department, Directorate of Kachi Abadis, Govt of Punjab and Lahore

Development Authority. The Survey was conducted in 1983 and has been used as a bench

mark for fresh assortment for EVS’ (PEF, 2010). So, there is no fresh survey available for

EVS targeting..

School selection: An analysis of the PEF website and the discussion with PEF indicates that

there is no clear cut criterion for selection of a school for partnership. So the PEF officials get

discretionary powers meaning thereby the school selection is done, sometimes, as per their

own likes and dislikes.

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Parents’ Role: Freedom of choice is often misused by the parents. In certain cases, they go

on shifting the school on one pretext or the other, which results in the loss of initial money

spent by the school on the child (Salman, 2009). This creates friction between the parents and

school management which is on the record (ibid.).

Monitoring and Evaluation:

Monitoring and evaluation is organizational-centred and is done only by the PEF officials.

Other stakeholders like parents, community and representatives of private schools’ bodies are

not part of this monitoring mechanism. EVS is a monitoring-intensive programme and the

research showed that there are certain gaps like, the EVS and Non EVS students study in the

partner schools simultaneously and ‘…it creates confusion in the monitoring’ (PEF official).

Similarly, maximum number or percentage of EVS Students in a particular private school is

not finalized (Salman, 2009).

Quality vs Equity side of EVS: As discussed above in the literature, equity has various

dimensions, whereas, the PEF is only emphasising the quality aspect of equity and other

aspects are not being focused. The Quality Assurance Test (QAT) which is conducted to

initiate and extend a partnership with the school.

Coverage issues: It is too early to give a definite judgement about the success of this scheme.

So far as it transpires that it is a good concept and due to meagre resources and untrained

human resource, the government a lot challenges and difficulties. Although it is in the

piloting stage, however, there is also a criticism on this by one official respondent;

‘Piloting EVS in the provincial headquarter of Lahore is a great laxity on the part of the

government. It should also have been piloted in the other small towns or rural areas’.

Expansion & Sustainability:

However, no PEF document or policy statement is available which talks about the continuity

of this programme to a certain period

Teachers’ quality and training: As per PEF documents, there are no clear cut guidelines on

the minimum qualification and salary of a teacher is in vogue.

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10. Recommendations

Replication of EVS is an important issue. Started as a pilot project in Lahore, now it has

been replicated to 35 districts of the Punjab (there are 36 districts in the Punjab province).

EVS should be replicated in rural areas of Punjab as they are more deserving. In the urban

areas and even in the slums there are multiple educational/work opportunities.

Equity assurance needs a robust accountability mechanism which may be ensured by a Body

of Citizens, Provincial Parliamentary Committee on Education, District Monitoring Teams,

and specialized education sector NGOs. Third Party Validation (TPV) method may also be

adopted to get transparent results of independent assessment for further improvement. It may

also help in assessing the impact of voucher on provision of educational opportunities for a

community.

Ownership of EVS is also quite important as it should be with the government instead of

being heavily dependent on the donors. In this connection, a re-thinking of partnership

dynamics is required to generate local resources and the option of indigenous philanthropy

may also be explored.

Performance Index of the partner schools may be developed in order to create a competition

among them. Moreover, the partner school should be subjected to the periodic review

dependent on the results of their students, additional private investment and improvement in

the working conditions of the teachers.

Teachers’ minimum qualification, duration and salary may be fixed. The posting duration of

a teacher in a private school may be fixed for at least one year (or one academic session) as

the continuous transfer/postings create a problem for the students’ achievements.

Data Base used to select the deserving families is of 1983 i.e. almost 27 years old which may

not be a representative of a locality where the EVS selection is being made. So a fresh survey

may be conducted to get the correct data for the targeting of EVS.

Selection Criterion of the partner schools is also not transparent and uniform which leaves a

lot of discretion for PEF functionaries. So there is every likelihood that good quality may be

left out due to the likes and dislikes of the PEF officials. A well-defined procedure may be

developed and adopted in letter and spirit.

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11. Conclusion

The current providers of education in Pakistan indicate that there has been a shift in the

manner in which the education provision is conceptualized. Most of the PPPs programmes

remain ad hoc and have little impact on the in addressing the fundamental challenges of

access, quality or equity, and because of being reliant on NGOs or donor funds. In turn these

temporary efforts contribute to greater fragmentation of educational planning and enhance

regional disparities.

As far as the EVS programme, aimed at ensuring equity, there are questions about its utility

and expansion, when in majority cases the students have no means of continuing education

beyond the primary level. EVS is a good example of forging partnership with the private

sector as it gives parents a bargaining power with the school management. However, it is

hasty to draw on models such as EVS without an explicit evaluation of the manner in which

the state regards the current contribution of PEF in the education sector. The result of PPPs

remained isolated projects within the education sector in Pakistan rather than leading to a

genuine forging of energies with the state.

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