Giving Girls a Chance in Village Schools of Pakistan

QADIRABAD, PAKISTAN (28 July 2003) - It was just 10 years ago that a school for girls opened in the northwest Pakistan village of Qadirabad - in a room in someone's home. With ADB assistance, it has now moved to a four-classroom building with 213 students, from nursery level to grade 5.

The school is part of an ADB-assisted five-year project to help the Pakistan Government in its long-term goal of building community model schools in each of the country's 4,000 rural villages.

The $78.8 million Second Girls' Primary School Sector Project, funded by $45 million from the ADB's Asian Development Fund, $16 million from the OPEC Fund, and $17.8 million from the Pakistani Government, had covered about a quarter of those villages by the end of 2001.

Education is arguably the most important criterion for escaping the poverty cycle. Aside from its obvious economic value, education brings with it huge social benefits, not merely in terms of health and personal well-being, but in the natural transfer of knowledge to others, whether children, relatives, and friends - a multiplier effect.

So far, the project has made concrete progress. Each year, 7,500 girls have entered grade 1 or 2 who would previously never have had the opportunity. Also, an estimated 120,000 girls, who would have been forced to drop out, have stayed the course. Each year, 35,000 girls are entering middle schools who would not have been able to otherwise.

But there are many constraints to overcome, chief among them being poverty, which creates a short-term outlook that confines girls to helping with housework or in the fields, rather than attending school. There are also cultural barriers that restrict gender equality or the freedom of movement of young girls to travel long distances to the schools.

In Pishin, a town just north of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, 25-year-old Shaheen Lajwer, a teacher since she was 15 and a committed advocate of gender equity in education, tries to convince parents of the value of educating their girls by quoting from the Koran.

"We used to go to different houses regularly for three or four days and try to convince the parents... that they should send their girls to school," she says. "I used to tell them ­stories from the Prophet... so when these girls used to go home, they used to tell their parents, 'this is what our teachers told us in school'."

Her approach has worked. She began with 13 students. When an ADB-funded school opened in 2000, there were 150. Today, there are 220.

But this success needs to be replicated across the region - and country. Statistics in Pakistan show that 55% of 7-year-old girls have been enrolled in school. For those aged 30-39, only 26% have ever been enrolled.

The three main reasons for not enrolling girls aged 7-12 years old based on a school year 2000/2001­survey were school expense (26%), lack of parental approval (26%), and distance from school (16%).

And there is another generic issue to be faced. The UN Millennium Development Goals of 2000 state that by 2015, all boys and girls will be able to complete a full course in primary schooling, and that gender disparity should be eliminated.

In school year 2000/01, 93% of Pakistani primary school-aged males were in school, while only 54% of the females were registered. But the more critical barrier is for Pakistan to achieve the goal of education for all by 2015 - a 100% capacity increase in primary spaces for children must be provided, the vast majority for girls.

Quality teaching gives quality education. ADB has helped train 9,000 community model school staff under the project. Aside from training in the use of annotated teacher guidebooks, ADB helped train these teachers in interactive radio instruction in both English and mathematics.

Most important, the will to learn is there.

Back in Qadirabad, about three hours from Quetta, standing beside an obviously proud grandfather, a girl named Saima is talking in front of a video camera, daring to say what once was unimaginable. "After finishing school, I'll go to college... and then into the Army."

Much still needs to change before her dream can come true.