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  • Punjab Education Foundation (PEF)


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    Education in Pakistan


    There have been dramatic changes in the educational landscape of Pakistan in the new millennium. Enrollments are starting to look up with a 10 percentage point jump in net enrollments between 2001 and 2005. In addition, secular and co-educational private schools have become a widespread presence in both urban and rural areas. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of private schools increased from 32,000 to 47,000 and by the end of 2005, one in every 3 enrolled children at the primary level was studying in a private school.

    These changes represent an opportunity and a challenge for educational policy in the country. A large fraction of rural Pakistani households no longer lives in a village with one or two government schools—the new educational landscape is best described as an active educational marketplace with schools on the one hand and parents on the other. From evaluating policy reform to understanding how the private sector can help educate the poor, the phenomenal rise of such schools represents a significant opportunity and challenge, not only in Pakistan but also in the wider South-Asian context.

    The "Learning and Educational Achievement in Pakistan Schools" (LEAPS) project provides the detailed information needed to understand this changing educational landscape. Over the past five years, the LEAPS project has gathered data not only on the distribution of schools throughout Pakistan, but also the quality of education provided by a representative sample of over 800 public and private schools in rural Punjab.

    The data collected by the LEAPS project and the LEAPS report on initial survey findings are both provided here, along with a variety of other resources on education in Pakistan. We hope you find them valuable.








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    For more information on the LEAPS project, click here.

     

    Recent Publications

    • Mar 2010 Private Schools, Earthquakes: What we know from Pakistan (with insights for Haiti)
      Presented at the 54th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society in Chicago, IL on March 3rd 2010
    • Nov 2009 The LEAPS Report - Executive Summary
      A thirty page summary of key findings from the LEAPS Report. (Also included in the complete LEAPS Report)
    • Nov 2009 The LEAPS Report
      The Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) Report provides an overview of the education sector based on the 2003 LEAPS Survey of schools, teachers, children, and households throughout rural Punjab.
    • Oct 2009 Do Value-Added Estimates Add Value?
      World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5066 - Tahir Andrabi (Pomona College); Jishnu Das (World Bank); Asim Ijaz Khwaja (Harvard University); Tristan Zajonc (Harvard University)