Education Reform in Pakistan Building for the Future

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Asia Program
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Contributors:
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Shahid Javed Burki
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Christopher Candland
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Grace Clark
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Education Reform in Pakistan
Ishrat Husain
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International Crisis Group
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Building for the Future
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Jonathan Mitchell, Salman Humayun, and Irfan Muzaffar
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Tariq Rahman
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Michelle Riboud
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Ahsan Saleem
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Salman Shah
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United States Agency for International Development
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World Bank, South Asia Human Development Department
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The Wilson Center's Asia Program would like to express its deep appreciation to the Fellowship
Fund for Pakistan for financial assistance supporting this publication. The opinions expressed
in this volume represent the personal views of the authors, and should not be construed as
opinions of either the Woodrow Wilson Center or any other institution.
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20004
Tel. (202) 691-4000 Fax (202) 691-4001
www.wilsoncenter.org
Edited by Robert M. Hathaway

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EDUCATION REFORM IN PAKISTAN:
Building for the Future
Edited by
Robert M. Hathaway

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Asia Program
EDUCATION REFORM IN PAKISTAN:
Building for the Future
Essays by:
Shahid Javed Burki
Christopher Candland
Grace Clark
Ishrat Husain
International Crisis Group
Jonathan Mitchell, Salman Humayun, and Irfan Muzaffar
Tariq Rahman
Michelle Riboud
Ahsan Saleem
Salman Shah
United States Agency for International Development
World Bank, South Asia Human Development Department
Edited by:
Robert M. Hathaway
©2005 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC
www.wilsoncenter.org
Cover Image: © Otto Lang/CORBIS
ISBN 1-933549-04-1

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1
Robert M. Hathaway
Educating the Pakistani Masses
15
Shahid Javed Burki
Education, Employment and
33
Economic Development in Pakistan
Ishrat Husain
Challenges in the Education Sector
47
in Pakistan
Salman Shah
Reform in Higher Education in Pakistan
55
Grace Clark
Against the Tide: Role of The Citizens Foundation
71
in Pakistani Education
Ahsan Saleem
Reasons for Rage: Reflections
87
on the Education System of Pakistan
with Special Reference to English
Tariq Rahman
Education Sector Reforms in Pakistan:
107
Demand Generation as an Alternative Recipe
Jonathan Mitchell, Salman Humayun,
and Irfan Muzaffar
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Report for Congress on Education Reform
123
in Pakistan
United States Agency for International Development
Education in Pakistan and the World Bank’s Program
139
Michelle Riboud
The Punjab Education Sector Reform
145
Program 2003–2006
World Bank, South Asia Human Development Department
Pakistan’s Recent Experience in Reforming
151
Islamic Education
Christopher Candland
Pakistan: Reforming the Education Sector
167
International Crisis Group
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INTRODUCTION
ROBERT M. HATHAWAY
Washington seems to be in a season ofworrying—some might
say “obsessing”—about the education system in Pakistan.
The 9/11 Commission, whose final report has become a fix-
ture on the bestseller lists, has highlighted the links between internation-
al terrorism and Pakistan’s religious seminaries, or madaris, and recom-
mended that the United States support Pakistani efforts to improve the
quality of the education it offers its young.1 The American government,
with the U.S. Agency for International Development as the lead agency,
plans to spend tens of millions of dollars this year alone on primary edu-
cation and literacy programs in Pakistan. Prestigious think tanks and
research centers, including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, which has produced this volume, have held conferences to
explore the challenges facing Pakistan in the education sector. For better
or worse, it would appear that Pakistan’s education system is the “flavor
of the month” in Washington.
Except that it is not just Washington that has discovered Pakistan’s edu-
cation sector. The international donor community has been active on this
front for decades, but has significantly expanded its activities in recent years.
UNICEF, for instance, has unveiled a new project to encourage girls at the
primary level to stay in school. The UN World Food Program has pledged
more than $50 million in food aid, also in the hope of persuading parents
to keep their daughters in school. The Brussels-based International Crisis
Group has released a widely noted report on reforming the public educa-
tion sector in Pakistan; its executive summary and recommendations are
reprinted in this volume.2 Analysts commissioned by the World Bank have
published another study—this one on religious school enrollment in
Pakistan—that has also drawn considerable attention and sparked a lively
debate on how serious a threat Pakistan’s madaris actually are.3
Robert M. Hathaway is director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
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Robert M. Hathaway
But most of all, Pakistanis themselves have raised the alarm and
encouraged this newfound interest in their schools. One of Pakistan’s
most distinguished scientists has written in the pages of the prestigious
Foreign Affairs that the “greatest threat to Pakistan’s future may be its
abysmal education system.” The newspaper Dawn ran an article a year or
so ago whose author observed that the gravity of the country’s education
crisis was “mind-boggling.” The list of problems in this area that need to
be addressed, he wrote, is “unending. . . . Small wonder, despondency is
setting in.”4 President Pervez Musharraf and other senior Pakistani officials
have highlighted the numerous deficiencies in the country’s education
sector as well; education reform is a central component of Musharraf ’s
vision of creating a modern, progressive Pakistan.
So we are not talking here of a problem that arises simply from the
fevered imaginations of an American capital still reeling from the blows
of September 11th and dangerously deficient in its understanding of
both Islam and the Islamic world. To the contrary, this volume explores
an issue that Pakistanis themselves have identified as vital to their
national well-being.
Pakistan’s education system is regularly cited as one of the most seri-
ous impediments preventing the country from achieving its potential. The
UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report gives
Pakistan the lowest “education index” score of any country outside
Africa. According to the International Crisis Group, Pakistan is one of
only 12 countries in the world that spends less than 2 percent of its GDP
on education. The adult literacy rate in Pakistan is under 50 percent,
while less than one-third of adult women have a functional reading abil-
ity. Even a short list of the problems Pakistan’s education system faces
today would include inadequate government investment, a shortage of
qualified teachers and poor teacher training, politicized curricula that fre-
quently promote intolerance and violence, insufficient number and poor
quality of textbooks and other teaching materials, fraud and corruption,
and weak institutional capacity at both the central and local levels.
In an essay combining history, demography, policy analysis, and pre-
scription, Shahid Javed Burki offers some striking demographic figures
that underscore the extent of the challenge facing Pakistan. Pakistan, the
world’s sixth most populous country, has one of the youngest populations
in the world. Half of its 155 million population is below the age of 18.
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Introduction
(In the United States, by contrast, the percentage of the under-18 cohort
is closer to one quarter.) Moreover, even with further reductions in the
birth rate, Pakistan could gain another 100 million people within the next
quarter century, and by 2030 could have 132 million youths below the
age of 18. And what, Burki asks, will become of this vast army of the
young? Unless Pakistan’s “dysfunctional educational system” is trans-
formed, it will continue to churn out large numbers of unemployable
young people whose bleak economic prospects make them prime targets
for purveyors of extremism. Already, Pakistan’s education system “not
only threatens economic, political and social stability within the country,
but also poses a real danger for the world at large.”
In response to the many shortcomings in their country’s public schools,
parents, educators, and community leaders have created a number of
alternatives to the state-run education system. According to State Bank
Governor Ishrat Husain, the number of private primary and secondary
schools in Pakistan increased nearly tenfold between 1983 and 2000, from
3,300 to 32,000. Today private schools may teach a quarter of the coun-
try’s students, and in some cities, more than half. As Jonathan Mitchell
and his collaborators observe in their contribution to this volume, these
are “stunning” statistics, “reflecting the loss of public confidence in pub-
lic education on one hand, and a testament to the demand for quality
education on the other.”
Some of these private schools are run by charitable and philanthropic
groups, including Islamic associations and foundations. Included in this
volume is an essay detailing the activities of The Citizens Foundation, one
of the most prominent educational philanthropies working in Pakistan
today. Other private schools are operated as profit-making enterprises,
often catering to the elite, frequently providing a quality education, and
priced beyond the means of all but the most affluent. Some for-profit
schools are geared to a less wealthy clientele, but the education provided
by such schools is often inferior.
Another alternative to the public school system is the madrassah, or
Islamic boarding school (although younger students are frequently non-
residential). In many localities, no public school exists and the madrassah
offers parents the only possibility of educating their children, so terming
madaris an “alternative” to public schools can be misleading. Madaris have
become highly controversial because of their alleged promotion of
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Robert M. Hathaway
Islamic fundamentalism, and the passions, pro and con, that surround
these schools have frequently served to skew the discussion of Pakistan’s
education sector.
Economists have only recently recognized the importance of educa-
tion in promoting economic growth, observes Ishrat Husain, governor of
the State Bank of Pakistan, in his contribution to this collection. Now,
however, most economists accept the linkage between education and
economic development; even a single additional year of schooling can
raise productivity by 10 percent, Husain writes. Unfortunately, Pakistan
continues to lag behind its neighbors in providing quality education for
its youth. Net primary-age enrollment rates in Pakistan are 50 percent; in
Bangladesh, 75 percent; in India, 77 percent; and in Sri Lanka, 100 per-
cent. And because government-run schools have failed so miserably in
producing an educated citizenry, today more than one primary student in
four attends a non-government school. But contrary to western myths,
Husain insists, relatively few primary students—less than one percent—
attend madaris. Moreover, he adds, the majority of madaris in Pakistan
offer a balanced curriculum, have no affiliation with religious extremists,
and do not promote jihad.
The essay by Salman Shah, a senior official in Pakistan’s ministry of
finance and a close adviser to the prime minister, also places Pakistan’s
education reform agenda into the broader context of development.
Only 30 percent of Pakistanis hold jobs, Shah notes, a rate that serves
as a powerful drag on development. This modest level of employment
reflects the fact that only about 19 percent of Pakistani women are in
the labor force, which in turn is a function of Pakistan’s low female lit-
eracy rate. Shah also underscores Pakistan’s high dropout rates. Whereas
83 percent of Pakistani children 5–9 years of age are enrolled in school,
this figure falls to less than 19 percent of 10–19 year olds. Pakistan’s
inability either to keep its children in school or to provide them with
vocational and technical training also retards its development. The
country’s existing vocational and technical training capacity, Shah
declares, is “negligible.” Moreover, enrollment in higher education in
Pakistan ought to be ten times the current 300,000.
Pakistan needs to create 2.5–3 million new jobs annually, Shah asserts.
As part of the strategy for job growth of this magnitude, the Pakistani
government over the next few years intends to double the proportion of
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