Gender and Development

Pakistan

Second Girls Primary School Sector Project, 1996

Cultural practices such as the segregation of the sexes can and often do restrict the participation of girls in schooling. Parents are hesitant to send their daughters to schools alongside male students or to be taught by male teachers. To tackle this problem, a concern in Pakistan, the Second Girls Primary School Sector Project (1996) is helping to establish community model schools (CMSs) for girls in rural areas. Each school has five classrooms-one for each primary school grade. Each school also has five female teachers trained under the project, and accommodation for the teachers to ensure that they are able to live comfortably in the vicinity of the school. Some of the CMSs are existing schools that have been converted. Others are new. Under an initial ADB-financed project, 800 CMSs were established. The second project aims to expand and establish CMSs in 1,000 union council areas throughout the country.

Building the school is only half the story. How do you get and keep girls in the schools? In Pakistan what are the required ingredients to transform a building into a school? Issues that need to be addressed include: How do you encourage parents to send daughters to schools? How do you get and keep female teachers? How do you discourage student and teacher absenteeism? The provision of physical infrastructure needs to be supplemented by other measures to make sure the schools function properly: that both teachers and students attend regularly and that the education is of a high standard.

In the Pakistan project, a participatory approach is being adopted to ensure this happens. Separate committees for men and women have been established with the help of NGOs to ensure full community participation in the management of the CMSs. The committees are playing a major role in encouraging the community to send their daughters to school on a regular basis, providing security for female teachers, and identifying local candidates to fill vacant teaching positions. Further capacity-building support under the project includes staff deployment programs to ensure that teachers are available in the rural schools and to reduce absenteeism and transfers.

Under the Primary School Sector project, families are seeing girls attend school regularly for the first time. Hopefully, in time parents will recognize the advantages of having literate daughters. They may appreciate the greater contribution their daughters will make to their own and their families' well-being and economic prosperity. Traditional barriers may break down as families and governments recognize the value of educating the girl child.