Gender and Development

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Pakistan

Girls' Education Project, Khwendo Kor

Background to the project

Girls’ educational attainment in Pakistan continues to lag behind the level of education attained by boys. This is seen in literacy levels and school enrollment figures, which reveal that large numbers of girls have limited access to even basic schooling. For example, the primary school enrollment rate for girls in 1996-1997 was estimated to be 66 percent of the total female population, compared to 90.7 percent of boys. At middle school, the rate was 37 percent for girls and 64 percent for boys. There are also significant provincial and rural disparities, with only three percent of rural 12-year old girls continuing at school, compared to 18 percent of boys. For example women’s literacy rates are lowest in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan. Literacy figures for 1995, show that only 12 percent and 6.6 percent of women in the NWFP and in Balochistan respectively were literate, compared to over 47 percent and 25 percent of men in these provinces.

There are many social and cultural reasons for this imbalance including poverty, early marriages of girls, cultural attitudes towards female education, restrictions on female mobility and gender discrimination in the household. Girls frequently drop out of school to stay at home to help with household chores and look after younger siblings. Many families view the formal education of girls as a waste of family resources and give priority to educating sons. Early marriage of girls also works against girls continuing at school. Other structural factors include the lack of female teachers and schools for girls in rural areas, distance of schools from villages and poor quality of teaching. As a result, the educational facilities and resources allocated to girls persistently fall behind those given to boys.

Khwendo Kor (or Sisters’ Home) has been trying to break the silence surrounding such gender inequality by mobilizing community support for girls’ education and advocating for policy reform. Registered in 1993, Khwendo Kor is a non-profit, non-government organization striving for the social and economic development of women and children under six main program areas: social organization; community-based education for women and girls; primary health care; women’s microenterprise development; human and institutional development; and advocacy.

Under its community-based education program, Khwendo Kor has successfully established 100 community schools throughout NWFP. In the district of Dir for example, Khwendo Kor has established 37 community-based schools, with a total of 47 teachers and 1448 girls and 55 boy students. To support these schools and to encourage parents to take an active role in their children’s education, Khwendo Kor has also established Parent Teachers Associations and Village Education Committees in these communities.

Despite its successes at the community-level, Khwendo Kor - in common with other small NGOs - has difficulty reaching and influencing government leaders and policy makers. This restricts the range of advocacy work that such organizations can achieve. To overcome such limitations, Khwendo Kor sought support from ADB and RETA 5889 to develop its institutional capacity in the area of advocacy and to strengthen its leverage at government and policy levels in order to promote girls’ education in the North West Frontier Province.

Project Components

Project components include:

• To create an enabling environment for girls’ education.
• To establish a provisional and divisional level education network.
• To increase social pressure to bring about positive change in education policy.
• To develop a database of organizations and institutions working on girls’ education.
• To stimulate informed debate and public consultation on girls’ education.
• To promote girls’ education through publications and the media.

The duration of the project is 12 months. The project has three main components to support the above objectives:

1. A provincial seminar on girls’ education.
2. To publish a quarterly newsletter and contribute articles on girls’ education to local and national press, and
3. To develop an Education Resource Centre at Khwendo Kor offices.

A provincial-level Education Core Group (ECG), comprising of representatives from NGOs, CBOs and government departments, was first established in 1996. Due to a lack of funds, however, it had not been functional for over two years. Funding through RETA 5889 has enabled the ECG to be re-established, with Khwendo Kor acting as convenor. Membership is growing as organizations involved in education all over the North West Frontier Province are contacted and invited to join. Over the course of the project, a number of divisional workshops will be held for members. The purpose of these workshops is to share information on the constraints and opportunities in the area of girls’ education. Issues, relevant experiences and positive developments discussed in these workshops will be shared to others through a quarterly newsletter and other media outlets.

A provincial-level seminar on girls’ education will be held following the establishment of the ECG and the conclusion of the divisional workshops. Participants in the seminar will include NGOs, CBOs, ECG members, academics, donor agencies, media and government representatives. The aim of this seminar is to promote the role of the ECG in education policy and review, as well as to establish the ECG as an important forum for addressing key issues concerning girls’ education.

The quarterly newsletter established under the project is important as it will strengthen information sharing between ECG members and the advocacy role of Khwendo Kor. To support this initiative, a full-time consultant has been hired to establish the proposed Urdu-language newsletter. The newsletter will include articles on girls’ education, field experiences, research findings and analysis of new government policy, strategies and press clippings. The Education Resource Centre not only supports current project components, but also provides an important basis for future advocacy in the area of girls’ education. The Centre is open to individual researchers, academic institutions as well as government and non-government organizations, and has already started to build a collection of books, reports, case studies, audio and video materials, policy documents and newspaper clippings related to girls’ education.

Outcomes of Project

Several divisional workshops have been held to date, resulting in a growing network of NGO and CBO representatives wishing to join the ECG. These workshops have also provided an important forum for sharing information on the constraints and opportunities relating to girls’ education in the different regions. A summary of small group discussions held at a divisional workshop in D.I. Khan in NWFP is presented below.

The establishment of the ECG is well underway with Khwendo Kor refining the terms of reference for members. Following discussions with ADB’s GAD Specialist, Khwendo Kor is proposing to establish an Executive within the ECG to act as a Sector Support Group to the provincial government. The Executive would be limited to between 10 and 12 elected members and a small number of honorary positions (such as the provincial Director General and Secretary of Education). Selection criteria for elected members would include experience in the field of education for at least three years, policy experience in the area of girls’ education, and advocacy skills. This would facilitate contact with the government, which to date has been reluctant to be involved in ECG activities including the district workshops.

As a result of district workshops and information sharing on the constraints facing girls’ education, Khwendo Kor in consultation with ADB’s GAD Specialist have drafted Action Plans in regard to two critical issues. Firstly, Khwendo Kor in common with other ECG members has witnessed a growing trend amongst reactionary religious groups to criticize girls’ education, including their enrollment in community-based schools. To deflect such comments, Khwendo Kor and the ECG will develop and disseminate strategies that mobilize community support for schools and the education of girls. This has already been done to great effect in a few areas where village leaders have informed local religious leader not to interfere in the general affairs of the village and used cultural values - such as the value of literacy and a respect for education - to discredit religious leaders’ arguments. Other strategies include holding community consultations on the value of educating girls, and involving mothers in such discussions as they are often more supportive of their daughters’ education.

Secondly, Khwendo Kor and other organizations involved in establishing community schools are to propose that the Education Department assume financial responsibility for community-based schools established by the NGO and CBO sector after five years of operation. They also want the Education Department to administer examinations and certificates to students of such schools, who are currently disadvantaged by the lack of formal recognition of their schooling. Furthermore, Khwendo Kor and the ECG would like the Education Department to consider mechanisms similar to those implemented in community schools to encourage girls enrollment, such as:

• Encouraging high levels of community participation and support,
• Locating schools in close proximity to villages,
• Providing low cost education to girls,
• Inviting mothers to actively participate in Parent Teacher Associations and Village Education Committees, and
• Focusing on re-enrollment of girl school dropouts by funding limited places for these students.

Summary of Small Group Discussions, Divisional Workshop in D.I. Khan, NWFP.

Key Constraints to Girls’ Education:

Economic

• Poverty, unemployment and the cost of education. When resources are limited families choose to invest in their sons’ education.
• Child labor within families, particular the use of daughters to assist with domestic chores and child minding.
• Families reluctant to invest in education as it does not seem to guarantee future work or a more high paying job in man rural areas.

Social

• The practice of early marriage.
• Educated girls seen as more likely to break away from ‘tradition’ and to challenge father’s and husband’s authority.
• Distance of schools from home and restricted mobility of girls.
• Families reluctant to encourage girls to leave home for further education or more skilled work.
• Education and work not seen as priorities for girls, in contrast to marriage and motherhood.
• Religious groups which mobilize followers against schools on the basis of the lack of segregation between boys and girls; the lack of female teachers; and the presumed moral dangers of educating girls.

Administrative

• No education budget as the Annual Development Program for Education at the provincial level has been frozen for the past seven years.
• Education is not seen as a priority by the government, resulting in no facilities, few schools and high teacher:student ratios. In this context, many parents see school fees paid for daughters as a waste of money.
• Low quality of teachers, teaching resources and facilities, compounded by high levels of teacher absenteeism.
• Lack of female teachers is due to isolation, lack of transportation and low salary. These also result in high levels of absenteeism among female teachers.
• New schools must be built on land provided by the community free of charge. This results in schools being built some distance away from villages thus increasing the risks for female teachers and students.

Future Direction

Building capacity in the area of advocacy cannot be achieved in the short term. Effective advocacy requires long-term networking and relationship building across a range of relevant government departments and non-government organizations. While Khwendo Kor has made a start in this area, there is scope to establish contact with other government agencies, particularly women-oriented agencies such as the Women’s Development Department (WDD) and the National Commission on the Status of Women. In terms of relationship building, Khwendo Kor and the ECG could offer support to these government agencies similar to the role of Sector Support Group it plans to offer to the provincial Education Department. The ECG should also consider inviting the Secretary of WDD to become a member of the ECG Executive. ADB can foster such linkages through its Capacity Building Project on Gender and Governance, which involves both the National Commission on the Status of Women and the Secretary, Women’s Development Department.

The critical link between literacy, education and economic growth needs to be better supported by the government. This is in line with ADB’s Pakistan Country Strategy Program (2002-2004), which highlights economic growth and human development, including education, literacy and GAD as thematic priority areas. The CSP also targets GAD as one of three priority areas for technical assistance and supports the general thrust of the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (2001). Building on this, ADB may want to consider supporting specific gender components in all education sector program loans and technical assistance. For example, projects such as Primary School Quality Sector Development Project (formerly, Teachers’ Training and Primary School Quality Project) have opportunities to include training components that encourage the retention of girls throughout primary and into secondary school.

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