PROJECT
Pakistan: Educational Opportunities in Rural Areas

Historically Pakistan has underinvested in public secular schooling, even at the primary level, particularly for girls. A recently published study of schooling in 12 rural communities (in Punjab and Northwest Frontier Province) in Pakistan drew on data collected by the Population Council in 1997 and found that girls’ enrollment is influenced not only by whether or not there is a primary school in the village but also by the quality of the local primary school when one is available.

This study explores the effect of primary school access, type, and quality on the decision to enroll in rural Pakistan. An analysis of gender-specific dimensions of school accessibility and school quality found that within the same village girls and boys often face very different options for schooling in terms of distance, type, and quality. Public primary schools are segregated by sex; private schools, which have rapidly been growing more numerous in recent years in response to rising demand and the inadequate supply of public schools, are more typically mixed. The study found that the presence of a public school for girls in the village makes an enormous difference for girls in primary enrollment, as parents are reluctant to allow girls to travel far from home; for boys this is less of a concern because most villages have at least one public school for boys. The study also found that the addition of a private school option in a village that already has a public school has little impact on overall enrollment rates but simply leads to a redistribution of enrollment from public to private school. Girls’ enrollment in public primary school is particularly responsive to improvements in some aspects of school quality, in particular whether or not the teacher resides in the village.

Panel data collected in 2004 provide insight about trends in primary school retention in the context of a rapid rise in the supply of private for-profit primary schools that has occurred since 1997. A 2005 working paper assesses the effects of primary school characteristics along with household characteristics and recent household economic and demographic shocks on school dropout rates during the first eight grades. These data are unique in a developing-country setting in that they track longitudinally both changes in the school environment (i.e., school and teacher characteristics) and in the household environment (including the arrival of unwanted births) for a panel of women and their children.

While grade retention has improved over the past six years, dropout rates for girls remain considerable, particularly at the end of primary school (grade five), at which point one-third of girls who started school have left. The results provide evidence of the importance of both household and school factors as statistically significant determinants of dropout rates. For girls, the arrival in the family of an unwanted birth within the last six years as well as enrollment in a government primary school (relative to a private school) significantly increased the likelihood of dropout, whereas the availability of post-primary schooling in the community, having a mother who had been to school, and living in a household with higher consumption levels reduced the probability of dropout. For boys, school quality—as measured by the percent of teachers in the primary school attended who reside in the community—and living in a more-developed community significantly reduced the probability of dropping out, and a loss of remittances in the household during the last six years significantly increased the likelihood of dropping out.

---

Location

Islamabad, Pakistan

Duration

1997–ongoing

Population Council researchers

Cynthia B. Lloyd, Zeba A. Sathar, Monica Grant, Mumraiz Khan, Minhaj ul Haque

Non-Council collaborator

Cem Mete (World Bank)

Donors

Center for Global Development

The Spencer Foundation

UK Department for International Development

Publications/Resources on this project

---

See Also

• Pakistan

• Gender and Family Dynamics

• Social Science

• Transitions to Adulthood/Schooling

---