Cell Phones Boost Pakistan's Literacy, Economy
A pilot program in Pakistan has demonstrated the effectiveness of pushing mass literacy through the use of cell phone text messaging capability. The five-month experiment, initiated by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), targeted 250 females aged 15 to 24 years old in three districts of Pakistan's Punjab province. In this pilot project which successfully concluded last month, the participant who have just completed the basic literacy course, were given a mobile phone each. They received three text messages a day in the local language. They were required to practice reading and writing the messages in their work book and reply to their teachers by text.
The success of this mass literacy initiative augurs well in a country like Pakistan, where the mobile phone penetration is among the highest in the developing world, and the number of mobile subscribers has rocketed from less than 2 million to more than 94 million (58% penetration) from 2002 to 2009. It is also significant because Pakistan also has the dubious distinction of having the fourth largest number of illiterate adults in the world, after India, China and Bangladesh, according to a recently released UNESCO report. India and Pakistan also have the worst gender gaps in literacy rates, exceeding 22%.
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The Daily Galaxy website has reported that a project, called Celedu, is starting its work in some rural villages in India, but hopes to expand far beyond that. Its initial offerings include cellphone-based games and quizzes that can teach basic literacy skills. For example, a child in India can play a game of Snakes and Ladders on the phone by answering multiple-choice questions about which words begin with a particular letter in the Hindi alphabet. Each correct answer allows the child's marker to advance through the game board, providing a fun and competitive approach to learning the written language.
"The biggest disease in India is illiteracy," which affects 400 million people there, says team member Rafael de Cardenas of Sloan. A PC-based version of the program, called Tele Akshar, "has already taught 54,000 women in 300 villages," he says, and the cellphone version should be able to reach far more people, according to Daily Galaxy.
In addition to education and healthcare, access to financial services has been fairly limited in Pakistan, particularly for the rural poor. The total banking sector serves around 6 million borrowers and 25 million depositors, implying a penetration rate of 3.6 percent and 15 percent respectively. In terms of access to microfinance, which means the availability of small loans, micro deposits and micro-insurance services to low income households, the current penetration rate is only 10 percent. In other words, 85 percent of Pakistan's population does not have access to any financial services at all, which inherently creates an uneven and an inequitable economic world, where the majority of people are financially marginalized. This situation drives the poor to rely on informal sources of funding like the unscrupulous moneylender, where the calculus of the relationship works to the detriment of the borrower. Well regulated banking and microfinance sectors are, therefore, absolutely necessary to give hope to the poor in breaking the vicious cycle of dependence and poverty.
Now, a number of telecom operators have now joined hands with financial institutions to extend the reach of financial services to the previously un-served masses, according to Babar Bhatti who operates "State of Telecom Industry" website. A successful example is Easypaisa, a telenor and Tameer Microfinance Bank joint offering that offers quick and easy remittance capability for the migrant workers wanting to send money to their loved ones.
The dramatic growth of cell phone usage in the developing world has created tremendous opportunities to deliver some of the basic ingredients of human development to the people, including education and health care. It has spawned a whole new field of research called "Information and Communication Technologies For Development" abbreviated as ICT4D. The UNESCO female literacy pilot helps establish some credibility for the advocates of ICT4D.
At MIT's Legatum Center, whose director Iqbal Quadir was the founder of Bangladesh's GrameenPhone, improving the delivery of health care in rural areas has been one major focus of their research efforts. Patients in a remote village, for example, now may have to spend a whole day or more traveling to the nearest clinic in order to be tested, diagnosed and receive treatment or a prescription drug for their health problems. But a new open-source software system developed by students who formed a nonprofit company called Moca could provide a faster way, according to a report in Daily Galaxy.
Using a menu of questions downloaded to a cellphone - and, if necessary, a picture taken with the phone's built in camera - a patient can transmit enough information to a doctor or nurse in a remote location to get a preliminary diagnosis, and to find out whether the condition warrants a trip to the clinic or not. "In developing countries, 80 percent of all physicians are in urban areas," while most of the people live in the countryside, according to Moca team member Richard Lu, an MIT graduate student in biomedical informatics.
A GSM Association study conducted by Deloitte and Touche in 2007 estimated that the mobile industry created 220,000 high-paying jobs in Pakistan and accounted for 5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and approximately 6% of the total taxes collected by the Central Board of Revenue. The study also found that Pakistan’s economy and society is benefiting from rising mobile phone usage and low tariffs, which lowers the cost of doing business and improves productivity, while helping families and friends to connect to each other at home and abroad.
Several studies by ICT4D researchers in Pakistan and other developing nations have concluded that the use of cell phones have helped reduce poverty and improve incomes of small vendors and service providers, such as beauticians, fishermen, taxi drivers, delivery people and small shopkeepers.
As the mobile broadband roll-out with WiMax, 3G and EVDO takes off in Pakistan, the mobile internet can become a reality, opening up vast opportunities for delivering more advanced capabilities for education, health care and business for the ordinary people. The availability of more powerful and inexpensive entry level smart phones and applications will help as well.
One example of telemedicine efforts is a Cisco project in Pakistan, where a trial combines satellite and WiMAX connectivity to mobile units to provide earlier cancer screening to rural patients.
Many critics and cynics have long dismissed the growing use of cell phones in Pakistan as just a waste of time and money. Based on the efforts of ICT4D believers, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the mobile phone in developing world could prove to be a an extremely useful tool providing a huge boost for human development, productivity and prosperity of the people at the bottom of the pyramid.
Related Links:
Poverty Reduction Through Telecom Access
Pakistan's Telecom Boom
Pakistan Tops Text Message Growth
WiMax Rollout in Pakistan
Mobile Internet in Pakistan
Low Literacy Threatens Pakistan's Future
Gender Gap in South Asia
Mobile Financial Services in Pakistan
Financial Services in Pakistan
Distance Learning in Pakistan
Top 5 ICT4D Trends in 2010
ICT4D in Pakistani Hospital
The success of this mass literacy initiative augurs well in a country like Pakistan, where the mobile phone penetration is among the highest in the developing world, and the number of mobile subscribers has rocketed from less than 2 million to more than 94 million (58% penetration) from 2002 to 2009. It is also significant because Pakistan also has the dubious distinction of having the fourth largest number of illiterate adults in the world, after India, China and Bangladesh, according to a recently released UNESCO report. India and Pakistan also have the worst gender gaps in literacy rates, exceeding 22%.
.jpg)
The Daily Galaxy website has reported that a project, called Celedu, is starting its work in some rural villages in India, but hopes to expand far beyond that. Its initial offerings include cellphone-based games and quizzes that can teach basic literacy skills. For example, a child in India can play a game of Snakes and Ladders on the phone by answering multiple-choice questions about which words begin with a particular letter in the Hindi alphabet. Each correct answer allows the child's marker to advance through the game board, providing a fun and competitive approach to learning the written language.
"The biggest disease in India is illiteracy," which affects 400 million people there, says team member Rafael de Cardenas of Sloan. A PC-based version of the program, called Tele Akshar, "has already taught 54,000 women in 300 villages," he says, and the cellphone version should be able to reach far more people, according to Daily Galaxy.
In addition to education and healthcare, access to financial services has been fairly limited in Pakistan, particularly for the rural poor. The total banking sector serves around 6 million borrowers and 25 million depositors, implying a penetration rate of 3.6 percent and 15 percent respectively. In terms of access to microfinance, which means the availability of small loans, micro deposits and micro-insurance services to low income households, the current penetration rate is only 10 percent. In other words, 85 percent of Pakistan's population does not have access to any financial services at all, which inherently creates an uneven and an inequitable economic world, where the majority of people are financially marginalized. This situation drives the poor to rely on informal sources of funding like the unscrupulous moneylender, where the calculus of the relationship works to the detriment of the borrower. Well regulated banking and microfinance sectors are, therefore, absolutely necessary to give hope to the poor in breaking the vicious cycle of dependence and poverty.
Now, a number of telecom operators have now joined hands with financial institutions to extend the reach of financial services to the previously un-served masses, according to Babar Bhatti who operates "State of Telecom Industry" website. A successful example is Easypaisa, a telenor and Tameer Microfinance Bank joint offering that offers quick and easy remittance capability for the migrant workers wanting to send money to their loved ones.
The dramatic growth of cell phone usage in the developing world has created tremendous opportunities to deliver some of the basic ingredients of human development to the people, including education and health care. It has spawned a whole new field of research called "Information and Communication Technologies For Development" abbreviated as ICT4D. The UNESCO female literacy pilot helps establish some credibility for the advocates of ICT4D.
At MIT's Legatum Center, whose director Iqbal Quadir was the founder of Bangladesh's GrameenPhone, improving the delivery of health care in rural areas has been one major focus of their research efforts. Patients in a remote village, for example, now may have to spend a whole day or more traveling to the nearest clinic in order to be tested, diagnosed and receive treatment or a prescription drug for their health problems. But a new open-source software system developed by students who formed a nonprofit company called Moca could provide a faster way, according to a report in Daily Galaxy.
Using a menu of questions downloaded to a cellphone - and, if necessary, a picture taken with the phone's built in camera - a patient can transmit enough information to a doctor or nurse in a remote location to get a preliminary diagnosis, and to find out whether the condition warrants a trip to the clinic or not. "In developing countries, 80 percent of all physicians are in urban areas," while most of the people live in the countryside, according to Moca team member Richard Lu, an MIT graduate student in biomedical informatics.
A GSM Association study conducted by Deloitte and Touche in 2007 estimated that the mobile industry created 220,000 high-paying jobs in Pakistan and accounted for 5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and approximately 6% of the total taxes collected by the Central Board of Revenue. The study also found that Pakistan’s economy and society is benefiting from rising mobile phone usage and low tariffs, which lowers the cost of doing business and improves productivity, while helping families and friends to connect to each other at home and abroad.
Several studies by ICT4D researchers in Pakistan and other developing nations have concluded that the use of cell phones have helped reduce poverty and improve incomes of small vendors and service providers, such as beauticians, fishermen, taxi drivers, delivery people and small shopkeepers.
As the mobile broadband roll-out with WiMax, 3G and EVDO takes off in Pakistan, the mobile internet can become a reality, opening up vast opportunities for delivering more advanced capabilities for education, health care and business for the ordinary people. The availability of more powerful and inexpensive entry level smart phones and applications will help as well.
One example of telemedicine efforts is a Cisco project in Pakistan, where a trial combines satellite and WiMAX connectivity to mobile units to provide earlier cancer screening to rural patients.
Many critics and cynics have long dismissed the growing use of cell phones in Pakistan as just a waste of time and money. Based on the efforts of ICT4D believers, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the mobile phone in developing world could prove to be a an extremely useful tool providing a huge boost for human development, productivity and prosperity of the people at the bottom of the pyramid.
Related Links:
Poverty Reduction Through Telecom Access
Pakistan's Telecom Boom
Pakistan Tops Text Message Growth
WiMax Rollout in Pakistan
Mobile Internet in Pakistan
Low Literacy Threatens Pakistan's Future
Gender Gap in South Asia
Mobile Financial Services in Pakistan
Financial Services in Pakistan
Distance Learning in Pakistan
Top 5 ICT4D Trends in 2010
ICT4D in Pakistani Hospital
Comments
1. If women could choose their birthplace, India might not a wise choice to be born.
2. In spite of recent economic success and euphoria about India, the people of India remain excruciatingly poor.
3. Literacy is low, corruption is high.
4. Only half the households have electricity.
5. Only one in 4 Indian homes has a toilet.
6. 40% of families with girls want to have more children, but families with boys do not want a baby girl.
7. It's especially unlucky to be born female, baby boy is like a 401 K retirement plan, baby girl requires a dowry fund.
8. Smile train Chennai did cleft repair surgery. A man was asked how many children he had. He said had 1, a boy. It turned out that he had 5 daughters which he did not mention.
9. Indian midwives paid $2.50 to kill girl with cleft deformity
10. Girls are highly undervalued, there are 35 million fewer females than males, presumed dead, killed by midwife or parent or starved to death. Unltrasound are used mainly to find and destroy female fetuses. Ultrasound and abortion are available even in the smallest villages with no electricity or clean water
11. If not aborted, baby girls face inequality and cruelty at every turn,
12. 61% of Indian men say wife beating is justified, 54% women agree, especially when dinner is burned or they leave home without husband's permission.
13. Unwanted pregnancies, STDs, HIV infections happen when 15% o the condoms fail. Indian council of med research found that 60% of Indian men's genitalia are too small by international standards.
14. Indian laws to protect women are widely ignored. The government has tried monetary rewards to keep baby girls and supported microfinance for women. NGOs programs, smaller condoms, other projects have had limited success.
15. People had little interest in State TV due to poor reception or boring programs. But cable television has helped women, as 150 million people between 2001-2006 got cable
TV which gave exposure to world.
16. American economists found that the effect of TV in 2700 households empowered women to be more autonomous. Cable TV households had lower birthrates, less domestic abuse and kept daughter in school.
The program has already noted success in a 62% increase in girls' attendance in the last decade.
"This is really a big help. In these times when things are so expensive, receiving [cooking] oil free of charge is a real bonus," Fareeda Bibi mentioned while placing the four-litre fortified oil tin by her tiny stove.
A tin of oil costs Rs 450 [US$5.5], and Fareeda needs at least three a month to cook for her family of eight.
"My husband earns Rs 5,000 [$61] a month as a carpenter, so our budget is tight. Over Rs 1,000 [$12.2] goes towards utility bills; we spend nearly 2,500 [$30.5] on food and then there are new shoes to be bought for the children or medical bills to pay for my parents-in-law. Every little bit that comes in free in such hard times is a bonus."
Fareeda's daughter Shama receives the oil at her school in Dera Ghazi Khan District in Pakistan's Punjab Province every month as part of a UN World Food Programme (WFP) operation run in conjunction with the government.
"The incentive is mainly to increase enrolment and keep the girls in school. The assistance is only given in girls' primary schools in Punjab. However, in NWFP [North West Frontier Province], Balochistan and Sindh, we have included boys as well," said Amjad Jamal, a WFP spokesman.
The programme had increased girls' enrolment by 25% and attendance by 62%
since 1998, said Marcelo Spinahering of WFP Pakistan. "Children are given high energy biscuits for onsite feeding in certain parts of the country. For the most part they receive take-home rations of four litres of fortified edible oil on a monthly basis and 50kg of wheat on a quarterly basis," he added.
Attitudes changing?
Fareeda said the school feeding programme had also played a part in persuading male members of her family to allow Shama to go to school, just like her two brothers.
"When they say there is no need to educate girls because they will never need to earn a living, I point out the oil we receive helps us run the house, and then they fall silent," Fareeda said, adding: "Of course it is very important to us that our daughter is being educated. I am not literate and this handicaps me."
Noor Bibi, the mother of another young schoolgirl said: "Even though we pay no fees at government schools, my husband says we spend too much on uniforms and books." The oil bonus helps 'balance' this, and she hopes to double the gains in a few years time when her two-year-old daughter is enrolled.
Fozia Hina, deputy district officer for Dera Ghazi Khan sub-district, said: "In areas such as ours, which is largely underdeveloped, parents do not like sending girls out of the house, even to school. Traditionally girls do not leave the home of their parents or husbands. Since the [cooking] oil incentive began several years ago more parents are eager to enrol kids. Mothers are keen to enrol even four-year-old girls."...
http://southasia.oneworld.net/todaysheadlines/pakistantake-home-rations-brings-girls-to-schools
The project, the fruit of a partnership between UNESCO, Mobilink Pakistan and Pakistani NGO, the BUNYAD Foundation of Lahore, was launched last year.
The five-month pilot project involved 250 adolescent female learners who were given mobile phones and who received interesting and informative daily text messages in Urdu which they were expected to respond to. The programme was conducted with the help of 10 teachers enlisted by the NGO.
Participants were subsequently evaluated to assess gains in knowledge and learning. At the start of the programme, 57per cent of the girls were graded C and only 28 per cent of the girls managed to score an A. Near the end of the pilot the situation had reversed with more than 60 per cent of girls awarded an A and C grades dropping to 11 per cent.
UNESCO and partners have expanded the programme to include another 1,250 girls in rural areas of four districts of Punjab.
Warren Mellor, Country Director UNESCO said that modern technology could help achieve the goal of universal literacy. He said Pakistan was a signatory to the Dakar Framework of Action for EFA in April, 2000 and has committed to achieving an 86 per cent literacy rate by 2015.
Mr Rashid Khan, President and CEO of Mobilink, said those taking part had shown a marked improvement in their literacy skills and confidence.
“The cell phone holds the key to social development by its very nature and we want to make sure that women are part of this revolution,” he said.
http://www.unesco.org/en/literacy/dynamic-content-single-view/news/expansion_of_womens_literacy_by_mobile_phone_programme/back/11922/cHash/29d9528978/
Bajaur, one of the seven administrative units in Pakistan's federally administered tribal area (Fata), on the border with Afghanistan, has experienced a marked rise in school enrolment since the beginning of the year. "Enrolment has increased and this year we enrolled 39,000 new students," says Muhammad Gul, an education officer in Bajaur. "Yet 80,000 remain out of school."
Gul believes poverty and illiteracy can be a potent combination in fuelling extremism. "If these kids don't have a pen in their hands, they will grow up and take up the Kalashnikov," he says.
Part of the reason for the increased level of enrolment in the area is the return of families displaced by conflict in 2008-09. Around 250,000 people were still displaced from Bajaur at the end of 2009, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. But for many the incentive is the ration of four litres of cooking oil (worth around £3, or just under $5) distributed every second month by the World Food Programme's (WFP) Back to School, Stay in School programme. To obtain the oil ration, students – who also receive locally manufactured high-energy biscuits daily from the WFP – must attend school 22 days each month.
The scheme was launched in January 2011 in Fata and all four provinces of Pakistan, but funding problems mean it is now limited to government-run schools in Fata (excluding North Waziristan, where the WFP is not working due to conflict). WFP spokesman Amjad Jamal says the programme has a two-pronged strategy: to address short-term hunger and nutritional deficiencies, and increase enrolment and retain those already in school. The WFP has been engaged in school feeding in Pakistan since 1968. Gul says that, of Bajaur's 616 schools, 435 (of which 135 are girls' schools) receive WFP help, benefiting 60,000 children. "Some areas are difficult to reach still and thus left out from the loop," he admits.
"We are seeking to make life easier for returnees by helping to ensure the provision of health and education," says Jamal. The NGO is supporting more than 990 schools, and 130,000 children take home the ration. The current programme ends in December, but will be renewed until 2015.
According to the International Crisis Group (pdf), there were around 4,660 primary schools, including 2,000 girls' schools, in Fata at the end of 2008. However, literacy remains low, and more than half of children who enrol in primary schools drop out before completing class five due to "poor quality of instruction, corporal punishment, teacher absenteeism, inaccessible locations and poorly maintained facilities, including shortages of furniture, clean drinking water and lavatories".
According to last year's national nutrition survey (pdf), 43.6% of Pakistani children under the age of five are stunted, 15.1% wasted, and 31.5% underweight. Approximately 32% are suffering from severe malnutrition, and 62.5% are anaemic.
Data collected by the directorate of education in Fata shows that, as of the end of March, 417 schools – including 133 for girls – had been blown up. Militants are still targeting educational institutions in the region, which is why parents are fearful of sending their children to school. However, Gul insists "poverty is a much bigger issue".
"Investing in the longer-term opportunities provided by education is not a consideration," Jamal says. And in tribal areas in particular, female education is seen as a wasted investment both economically and culturally.
..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/aug/09/pakistan-fata-area-increase-school-enrolment
PITTSBURGH-A silly telephone game that became a viral phenomenon in Pakistan has demonstrated some serious potential for teaching poorly educated people about automated voice services and provided a new tool for them to learn about jobs, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
The game, called Polly, is simplicity itself: a caller records a message and Polly adds funny sound effects, such as changing a male's voice to a female voice (or vice versa), or making the caller sound like a drunk chipmunk. The caller can then forward the message to one or more friends, who in turn can forward it along or reply to it.
Polly may not sound like a research project, but Roni Rosenfeld, professor in Carnegie Mellon's Language Technologies Institute, said it is pioneering the use of entertainment to reach illiterate and low-literate people and introduce them to the potential of telephone-based services. Such phone services could help non-affluent, poorly educated people find jobs, find or sell merchandise, become politically active, create speech-based mailing lists and even support citizen journalism.
But people can't use these services if they don't know how.
rosenfeldEven though most people in Pakistan have access to a phone, many don't understand the technology behind an automated telephone-based service, said Agha Ali Raza, a Ph.D. student in language technology and a native Pakistani. "They expect to talk to a person on the other end of the line," he explained. "When they hear, 'Press 1 to do this,' or 'Press 2 to do that,' they don't press anything; they just start talking."
With Polly, Rosenfeld, Raza and Umar Saif, an associate professor of computer science at LUMS, have shown that if the training is fun, people will not only learn how to use phone-based services, but will eagerly spread the word and even show each other how to use it. Polly was launched in Lahore, Pakistan in May 2012 by giving its phone number to five poor, low-skilled workers. By mid-September, 85,000 people had used it almost half a million times.
Though budget pressures forced researchers to begin limiting calls to Polly in September, the total number of users climbed to more than 160,000 people, including some non-Pakistanis, as of mid-April. Overall, the system has handled almost 2.5 million calls. The project continues to run.
razaWhat's more, Polly doesn't just deliver funny messages; it also includes job listings. "We daily scan Pakistani newspapers for advertisements for jobs that are appropriate for low-skilled, low-literate workers, record them in the local language and make them available for audio-browsing during the interaction with Polly," Rosenfeld said. As of mid-April, the ads had been listened to more than 380,000 times and had been forwarded more than 21,000 times.
Raza, the lead author, will present results of the research on May 1 at CHI 2013, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Paris, where the report has received a Best Paper award.
Rosenfeld said the entertainment value of Polly helped it spread rapidly, but can't sustain it over time, noting game play dropped rapidly as its novelty wore off. But adding services, such as the job ads, can keep people calling in.
"We found that users took to the job information in large numbers and that many of them started calling Polly specifically for that service - exactly the result we had hoped for," he said....
http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2013/april/april18_polly.html
For 1,500 women in Pakistan, an SMS message will soon be a tutor, textbook and school all rolled into one.
On Wednesday, Mobilink Foundation — a nonprofit organisation established by Mobilink in 2007 — and UNESCO signed an agreement to enhance their “SMS-based Literacy” programme.
The programme, which will now enter into a fourth phase, aims to educate 1,500 illiterate women in Punjab and Sindh using tutorials that will be sent via text messages in Urdu. At least 4,000 women have previously benefited from the same programme.
In the latest phase, UNESCO has collaborated with government education departments and agencies to increase the project’s outreach. As a result, 500 male students at 20 centres in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa will also be taking part.
The six-month initiative will be managed under Mobilink Foundation’s “mTaleem” scheme, which provides education to underprivileged communities across Pakistan.
Throughout the programme, the women, who will be selected by community-based nonprofit organisations, will be given basic training on how to use mobile phones and practical hands-on experience.
The learning performance of the students will be tested using a special software developed by Mobilink.
During this phase, learners at 20 centres, namely Multan, Sahiwal, Okara, Thatta, Jacobabad and Shaheed Benazirabad will be participating in the programme. The phase also includes UNESCO’s initiative for the capacity building of rural female teachers, whereby 150 teachers in Islamabad will be trained about Early Childhood Education while 30 teachers in Multan, Sahiwal and Okara will learn about literacy and non-formal basic education.
UNESCO Islamabad Director Dr Kozue Kay Nagata said that the programme’s novel approach, while developing interest among the learners would also safeguard them from relapsing into illiteracy.
The mobile phones, however, contextualise the learning to suit modern day realities.
The phones can be used for sending and receiving text messages in the future, thereby helping the women retain the basic language skills they have learnt, said Nagata.
Incentives such as permanent ownership of the phone sets and free SMS from Mobilink for a fixed duration also fuel interest, she added.
Mobilink Corporate Communications Head Omar Manzur said the programme has also won the GSMA’s Global Mobile Award in the “Connected Life Awards” category and was acknowledged as the “Best Mobile Education or Learning Product or Service” in February this year.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/553079/sms-based-literacy-programme-education-may-be-just-a-text-message-away/
By Dr Ayesha RazzaqueMay 22, 2022
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/959718-pakistan-s-generational-shift
In this generation only 18.7 per cent of rural women are without an education, down from 75.5 per cent from their mothers’ generation. Nearly 50 per cent have an education ranging from a primary to secondary education, up from just 20 per cent in the previous generation. A stunning 22.9 per cent have a higher secondary or above education, up from an almost nothing 0.3 per cent in their previous generation.
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Last year saw the publication of ‘Womansplaining – Navigating Activism, Politics and Modernity in Pakistan,’ a book edited by Federal Minister Sherry Rehman to which I was able to contribute a chapter. It connected education with women’s rights and argued that indigenous movements like the Aurat March should focus on education as a core part of their agenda.
Detractors of Pakistan’s women’s rights movement have been taking potshots at it by claiming that the issues it raises are not the issues of ‘real’ (read: rural) women. Put aside for a minute the fact that Pakistan’s rural population now accounts for 62 per cent, down from 72 per cent in 1980, and is on a steady decline. While the numbers may differ, and women’s power to negotiate may differ, rural and urban women share basic challenges and better education can yield similar opportunities and improvements in life circumstances.
Indigenous progressive and women’s rights movements have adopted the cause of education as an agenda item but should make it front and center, specifically K-12 education for girls in rural areas. New data further substantiates that connection with numbers. Education up to the higher secondary level, just the education that rural schools offer today, is the enabler that brings increased women’s labour force participation, delayed first marriage, lower rates of consanguinity, increased income, increased spousal income, and is a contributing factor to greater freedom of movement and communication – all positives.
Studies exploring the relationships between levels of education and life circumstances around the world are plentiful and capture the situation at a point and place in time. The Learning and Educational Achievements in Pakistan Schools (LEAPS) programme is qualitatively different because it already spans a period of almost two decades. The LEAPS programme has been tracking lower- and middle-income households in 120 randomly selected villages across three districts in rural Punjab since 2003. It has been revisiting them since then, most recently for the sixth time in 2018, roughly once every three years. That makes it one of the largest and longest panels of households in lower- and middle-income countries. This study is also unique as it looks at return on investment in education beyond an individual’s income and looks into the possible spillover into life circumstances and quality-of-life which is especially interesting for those interested in women empowerment and feminist movements.
In this latest round it surveyed 2006 women now aged 20-30. All these women were from the same 120 birth villages and have been tracked to their marital homes within or outside the village if they have married, migrated or moved for any other reason. Preliminary descriptive results of the long-running LEAPS study tell interesting stories. The headline finding of LEAPS investigators is that Pakistan is in the midst of a ‘generational shift’ where, for the first time in its education history, we have a ‘critical mass of moderately educated women’.
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Existing plans, at least in the domain of education, remain unguided by some of the very excellent evidence that is available. Meanwhile, the Planning Commission is organizing a ‘Turnaround Pakistan’ conference perhaps as early as May 28 to conduct national consultations. Whether a hurriedly thrown together conference can change the way business is done remains to be seen.
@bilalgilani
Literacy rate by age
Alhamdulilah the younger generation is significantly more literate than older generation
Our literacy rate ( which is calculated on 15+ age group) is going to rise slowly as it has older cohorts in large numbers
Literacy is not end all but it's a start
https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1679408985613676545?s=20
(Bar graph shows literacy rate is 75% for 10-14 age group, 73% for 15-19 and 69% for 20-24....going down to 51% for 40-44 and 34% for 60-64 age group)