More Pakistanis Complete Education Than Indians

Pakistanis spend more time in schools and colleges and graduate at a higher rate than their Indian counterparts in 15+ age group, according to a report on educational achievement by Harvard University researchers Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee.

In a recent Op Ed titled "Preparing the Population for a Modern Economy" published by Pakistan's Express Tribune, Pakistani economist Shahid Burki wrote as follows:

"Pakistan does well in one critical area — the drop-out rate in tertiary education. Those who complete tertiary education in Pakistan account for a larger proportion of persons who enter school at this level. The proportion is much higher for girls, another surprising finding for Pakistan."

Source: Global Education Digest


Upon closer examination of Barro-Lee data on "Educational Attainment for Total Population, 1950-2010", it is clear that Pakistani students stay in schools and colleges longer to graduate at higher rates than Indian students at all levels--primary, secondary and tertiary. While India's completion rate at all levels is a dismal 22.9%, the comparable completion rate in Pakistan is 45.7%.

Here is a summary of Barro-Lee's 2010 data in percentage of 15+ age group students who have enrolled in and-or completed primary, secondary and tertiary education:

Education Level.......India........Pakistan

Primary (Total)........20.9..........21.8

Primary (Completed)....18.9..........19.3

Secondary(Total).......40.7..........34.6

Secondary(Completed)...0.9...........22.5

College(Total).........5.8...........5.5

College(Completed).....3.1...........3.9



It shows the following:

1. India's overall schooling rate of 67.4% exceeds Pakistan's 61.9% in 15 and over age group.

2. Pakistan's primary schooling rate of 21.8% is slightly higher than India's 20.9% of 15+ age group

3. India has a big edge with its secondary enrollment of 40.7% over Pakistan's 34.6%, but India's completion rate at this level is a dismal 0.9% versus Pakistan's 22.5% of the population of 15+ age group.

4. India's tertiary education enrollment rate of 5.8% is higher than Pakistan's 5.5%, but Pakistan's college and university graduation rate of 3.9% is higher than India's 3.1% of 15+ age group.

5. Pakistan's combined graduation rate at all three levels is 45.7% versus India's 22.9% among the population age group of 15 years or older.



Barro-Lee data also shows that the percentage of 15+ age group with no schooling has gone down in both nations in the last decade, particularly in Pakistan where it dropped dramatically by a whopping 22% from 60.2% in 2000 to 38% in 2010. In India, this percentage with no schooling dropped from 43% to 32.7% of 15+ age group.



The Aug 23 & 30, 2010 issue of Newsweek had a cover story titled "The Best Country in he World is...". It ranked top 100 nations of he world based on education, health, quality of life, economy and politics. On education, Newsweek ranked Pakistan 86 and India 88 among 100 nations it included.

Clearly, both India and Pakistan have made significant progress on the education front in the last few decades. However, the Barro-Lee dataset confirms that the two South Asian nations still have a long way to go to catch up with the nations of East Asia and the industrialized world.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings
India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2010

Educational Attainment Dataset By Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee

Quality of Higher Education in India and Pakistan

Developing Pakistan's Intellectual Capital

Intellectual Wealth of Nations

Pakistan's Story After 64 Years of Independence
Pakistan Ahead of India on Key Human Development Indices

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Here's a Times of India report on high drop-out rates:

NEW DELHI: Amid all the celebrations over the Right to Education ( RTE) coming into effect from April 1, there is an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. It's called dropout rate.

The spotlight till now has been on expanding the infrastructure, appointing teachers, ensuring that schools are at walkable distances, and so on.

All this is undoubtedly needed. But the biggest problem facing the schooling system is that over 50% of children who join up in Class I drop out by Class VIII. It is not about children who never attended school - those are a
separate and fast diminishing category.
----------
There is no definitive number of dropouts in the government records. Last year, the joint review mission (JRM) of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the government's flagship programme for universalization of elementary education, questioned the veracity of the government's estimate of 2.8 million out-of-school children in its report. It revealed that small independent studies in Orissa and Varanasi had shown that actual number of out-of-school children were six to eight times the government's estimates from the same households.

Out-of-school children include both, those who drop out and those who never attended. According to the JRM report, nearly 2.7 million children drop out of school every year.

Thus, the number of out-of-school children, in violation of the law for compulsory education, would be many times this number.

Calculation based on net enrolment ratios reported by JRM reveals a much more dire picture. The net enrolment ratio for Classes VI to VIII was reported by the JRM as 54%, that is, just 54% of all children in the age group 11-14 years were actually enrolled.

This means that approximately 44 million children in this age group do not go to school. For Classes I to V, net enrolment ratio of 97% was reported, leaving out nearly 4 million children.

To address the huge problem of dropouts, policy makers need to look at the factors that lead children to leave school at various stages. Surveys by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), which asked boys and girls why they dropped out from school, got some jaw-dropping answers.

About 42% of girls said that they were told by their parents to look after the housework and 14% said that their elders thought that more education was unnecessary for them.

In the case of boys, these two reasons were minor, given by only 11% of them. Their main reason for dropping out, given by 68%, was to supplement the family income.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/Will-RTE-address-rising-dropout-rate/articleshow/5755842.cms
Riaz Haq said…
Labor force data from the World Bank for 2007 indicates that 23% of Pakistan's labor force has had tertiary (college) education.

This compares with 61% in the United States, 32% in the UK, 20% in Malaysia, 33% in Singapore and 17% in Sri Lanka.

It has no data for India or China.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TERT.ZS
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a Dawn report on the launch of Pakistani economist Shahid Javed Burki's book "South Asia in the new World Order" in Singapore:

ISLAMABAD: Renowned economist and scholar Shahid Javed Burki said that Pakistan’s economy can catch up fairly fast to the developed world, as compared with India, by adopting proper policy and fully mobilizing the available rich natural and human resources.

He was addressing the launching ceremony of his book ‘South Asia in the new World Order’ in Singapore, said a message received here Thursday.

Burki said that Pakistan’s GDP growth had been double of India’s growth rate of 2-3 percent for four decades 1947-1987. He quoted a recent Harvard University study which has mentioned that Pakistan’s higher education sector was performing better than India and Bangladesh.

This, he attributed to the investment made by the private sector in education. Syed Hasan Javed, High Commissioner of Pakistan in Singapore who was guest honour on this occasion said South Asia is blessed with rich heritage and natural, physical and human resources.

He observed that the South Asian states could learn from Confucianism’s teaching of ‘Prosperity they neighbor’ and the role model of ASEAN, in order to promote regional cooperation in the economic sector.

Prof. Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy endorsed the views of Shahid Javed Burki and the High Commissioner in order to generate a new thought process in South Asia.


http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/25/pakistans-economy-has-rich-potential-to-grow-fast-burki.html
Unknown said…
Nice article... Interesting and quite informative... Thanks for sharing...
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a NY Times opinion piece by Bill Keller on technology disrupting the higher education model of elite brick-and-mortar universities like Stanford:

...one of Stanford’s most inventive professors, Sebastian Thrun, is making an alternative claim on the future. Thrun, a German-born and largely self-taught expert in robotics, is famous for leading the team that built Google’s self-driving car. He is offering his “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online and free of charge. His remote students will get the same lectures as students paying $50,000 a year, the same assignments, the same exams and, if they pass, a “statement of accomplishment” (though not Stanford credit). When The Times wrote about this last month, 58,000 students had signed up for the course. After the article, enrollment leapt to 130,000, from across the globe.

Thrun’s ultimate mission is a virtual university in which the best professors broadcast their lectures to tens of thousands of students. Testing, peer interaction and grading would happen online; a cadre of teaching assistants would provide some human supervision; and the price would be within reach of almost anyone. “Literally, we can probably get the same quality of education I teach in class for about 1 to 2 percent of the cost,” Thrun told me.

The traditional university, in his view, serves a fortunate few, inefficiently, with a business model built on exclusivity. “I’m not at all against the on-campus experience,” he said. “I love it. It’s great. It has a lot of things which cannot be replaced by anything online. But it’s also insanely uneconomical.”

Thrun acknowledges that there are still serious quality-control problems to be licked. How do you keep an invisible student from cheating? How do you even know who is sitting at that remote keyboard? Will the education really be as compelling — and will it last? Thrun believes there are technological answers to all of these questions, some of them
being worked out already by other online frontiersmen.

“If we can solve this,” he said, “I think it will disrupt all of higher education.”

Disrupt is right. It would be an earthquake for the majority of colleges that depend on tuition income rather than big endowments and research grants. Many could go the way of local newspapers. There would be huge audiences and paychecks for superstar teachers, but dimmer prospects for those who are less charismatic.
----------
I see a larger point, familiar to all of us who have lived through digital-age disorder. There are disrupters, like Sebastian Thrun, or Napster, or the tweeting rebels in Tahrir Square. And there are adapters, like John Hennessy, or iTunes, or the novice statesmen trying to build a new Egypt. Progress depends on both.

Who could be against an experiment that promises the treasure of education to a vast, underserved world? But we should be careful, in our idealism, not to diminish something that is already a wonder of the world.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/opinion/the-university-of-wherever.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&sq=digital%20education&st=cse&scp=4
Riaz Haq said…
Here's an excerpt from "Sweet Smell of Success" originally published in The Caravan Magazine before it was censored, by Sidhartha Deb, the author of "The Beautiful and The Damned", on quality of private higher education in India:

A PHENOMENALLY WEALTHY INDIAN who excites hostility and suspicion is an unusual creature, a fish that has managed to muddy the waters it swims in. The glow of admiration lighting up the rich and the successful disperses before it reaches him, hinting that things have gone wrong somewhere. It suggests that beneath the sleek coating of luxury, deep
under the sheen of power, there is a failure barely sensed by the man who owns that failure along with his expensive accoutrements. This was Arindam Chaudhuri’s situation when I first met him in 2007. He had achieved great wealth and prominence, partly by projecting an image of himself as wealthy and prominent. Yet somewhere along the way he had also created the opposite effect, which—in spite of his best efforts—had given him a reputation as a fraud, scamster and Johnny-come-lately.

Once I became aware of Arindam Chaudhuri’s existence, I began to find him everywhere: in the magazines his media division published, flashing their bright colours and inane headlines from little newsstands made of bricks and plastic sheets; in buildings fronted by dark glass, behind which earnest young men imbibed Arindam’s ideas of leadership; and on the tiny screen during a flight from Delhi to Chicago, when the film I chose for viewing turned out to have been produced by him. It was a low-budget Bombay gangster film with a cast of unknown, modestly paid actors and actresses: was it an accident that the film was called Mithya? The word means falsehood, appearances, a lie—things I would have much opportunity to contemplate in my study of Arindam.

Every newspaper I came across carried a full-page advertisement for Arindam’s private business school, the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), with Arindam’s photograph displayed prominently. It was the face of the new India, in closeup. His hair was swept back in a ponytail, dark and gleaming against a pale, smooth face, his designer glasses accentuating his youthfulness. He wore a blue suit, and his teeth were exposed in the kind of bright white smile I associate with American businessmen and evangelists. But instead of looking directly at the reader, as businessmen and evangelists do to assure people of their trustworthiness, Arindam gazed off at a distant horizon, as if pondering some elusive goal.

There were few details about the academic programme or admission requirements in these advertisements, but many small, inviting photographs of the Delhi campus: a swimming pool, a computer lab, a library, a snooker table, Indian men in suits, a blonde woman. A fireworks display of italics, exclamation marks and capital letters described the perks given to students: “free study tour to Europe etc. for twenty-one days,” “world placements,” “Free Laptops for all.” Stitching these disparate elements together was a slogan: “Dare to Think Beyond the IIMs”—referring to the elite, state-subsidised business schools, and managing to sound promising, admonishing and mysterious at the same time. The new India needed a new kind of university, and a new kind of attitude, and Arindam, said the ads, was the man who could teach you how to find it.

"I'VE SPOKEN TO THE BOSS about you,” Sutanu said. “He said, ‘Why does he want to meet me?’”
Sutanu ran the media division of Arindam’s company from a basement office where there was no cellphone reception, and it took many calls and text messages to get in touch with him. When I finally reached him, he sounded affable enough, suggesting that we have lunch in south Delhi. We met at Flames, an “Asian Resto-Bar” in Greater Kailash-II with a forlorn statue of the Buddha tucked away in the corner...


http://pastebin.com/UBtEqF1L
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a brief summary of Pakistan foreign education market put together by the British Council:

Pakistan is one of the six countries which accounts for 54 percent of the UK’s (non-EU) international students. After September 2001, it has become the market leader, a place traditionally taken by the US, but the US is picking up after a long time, owing to simplified visa procedures and increased marketing efforts, not to forget the excellent scholarship opportunities that thy have to offer Pakistani students.

There were 5222 students from Pakistan studying in the United States in 2009/2010 (Source:IIE Opendoors). Pakistan now has the largest Fulbright Scholarship Programme in the world. There is an upward trend of Pakistani students studying in Australia. 2557 students studied in Australia in 2009/2010 compared to 2190 in 2008/2009 (Source: AEI). Other European countries have also become quite active in marketing their education in Pakistan. Countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are more visible and perceived as offering quality education at lower prices. UK has remained the highest in this with 10,420 students studying in the UK in 2009/2010 (HESA, 2011).


Market opportunities
Pakistan is predominantly a postgraduate market, of the students currently studying in the UK, approximately 71 per cent are postgraduate and 29 per cent undergraduate. While the further education market is still relatively small, there is potential for growth, as there is a greater need for skills in a more service sector-led economy.

One-year Master's programmes are popular, due to their shorter duration compared to competitors. A further major aspect of the postgraduate market is the relatively wide availability of scholarships by UK institutions and Government funding agencies. In addition to the Pakistan Government‘s new overseas scholarship schemes, this target group also has access to scholarships offered by international organisation such as IMF, Commonwealth and World Bank. Popular subject areas are for 2009- 2010 are Business Studies, Engineering, Computer Sciences, Social Sciences followed by law.

Based on HESA statistics, the total number of Pakistani students enrolled in the UK was 10,420 in 2009 / 2010, a 2 percent growth on 2008/2009.

There is also significant growth in GCE O- and A-levels conducted in Pakistan, which naturally leads to demand for UK undergraduate study. More than 46,000 students took these examinations in 2010 / 2011. Popular subjects include business, law, accountancy, IT, management and engineering.

Foundation programmes have a market in Pakistan as a pathway from 12-year study into UK higher education.

Vocational programmes are a new market in Pakistan, with increasing student awareness of the opportunities. National Vocational and Technical Education Commission (NAVTEC) is a regulatory body for promoting linkages among various stakeholders to address challenges aced by Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET)....
Riaz Haq said…
Though the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has made enormous efforts to promote research work, Pakistan ranked 43rd in the world in terms of published scientific papers in the year 2010, according to Dawn newspaper.

According to the worldwide scientific journal ranking (SJR); Pakistan published 6,987 research documents in 2010. However, the same year United States was on top with 502,804 papers followed by China with 320,800 and United Kingdom with 139,683 research documents. On the other hand, India ranked ninth worldwide.

Among the Islamic countries, Pakistan trailed behind Turkey and Iran which published 30,594 and 27,510 research documents, respectively.

An official of the HEC requesting not to be named told this reporter that in 2007 Pakistan ranked 45th with 3,750 publications, in 2003 it was ranked 50th with 1,539 research papers and in 2000 54th with 1,174 papers. In 1996, the country was on 52nd position with 893 research papers.

The number of publications is directly proportional to the production of PhDs in the country.

“Pakistan gets over $10 billion every year through foreign remittances. On the other hand, due to financial crunch demand for foreign labour has been decreasing worldwide. Even in Saudi Arabia it has been decided to push out foreign labour force and adjust the locals in their places, because it is becoming difficult even for the oil-producing countries to address the problem of unemployment.”

The official claimed that in the West, population was decreasing and the new generation was more interested in the subjects of art and humanities rather than science, mathematics and research work.

Due to this, the official added, the demand for specialised persons would increase in the West and Pakistan can meet the requirement of these nations by producing specialised persons and earn huge foreign exchange.

Sources said most of the successive governments in Pakistan did not take future planning seriously and always tried to solve problems by makeshift arrangements. The government should focus on specialisation in different subjects because only specialised persons can earn foreign exchange to steer out the country from the financial problems.

Executive Director HEC Prof Dr S. Sohail H. Naqvi told Dawn that they had been trying to generate as many specialised persons as possible and for that reason were encouraging and facilitating universities. He said for increasing the number of PhDs, the commission required funds. “Hopefully, Pakistan will further improve its ranking regarding publication of
research papers,” he said.


http://www.dawn.com/2011/12/26/pakistan-ranks-43rd-in-scientific-research-publication.html
Riaz Haq said…
Details of latest supercomputer at NUST in Pakistan by HPC Wire:

Following India’s announcement of installing that country’s fastest supercomputer, news out of Islamabad reports that Pakistan has just unveiled its speediest super as well.

The system will reside at the Research Center for Modeling and Simulation (RCMS), which was acquired by Pakistan’s National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) through a grant provided by the country’s Ministry of Science and technology. An inauguration event was held where RCMS Principal, Sikandar Hayat noted that the new system is the fastest GPU-based parallel computer in the country.

The system, known as ScREC, is named after the university’s supercomputing research and education center. The cluster consists of 66 nodes equipped with a total of 30,992 cores. The NUST site breaks down the components as follows: 32 dual-socket quad-core nodes, 32 NVIDIA GPUs, a QDR InfiniBand interconnect, and 26.1 TB of storage. Specifics on the CPU or GPU parts were not provided.

While Linpack performance has not been posted, the system runs at a peak of 132 teraflops. Given that most GPU-accelerated TOP500 systems only achieve about a 50 percent Linpack yield of peak performance (depending upon the CPU-GPU ratio and interconnect), the system should deliver at least 60 Linpack teraflops. That would place the system in the current list, giving Pakistan a slot in the TOP500. Unfortunately the rankings are a moving target, and the June update may well exclude sub-60-teraflop machines. The slowest supercomputer on the current TOP500 is at 51 teraflops.

ScREC will be used to assist NUST with research in the areas of computational biology, computational fluid dynamics, image processing, cryptography, medical imaging, geosciences, computational finance, and climate modeling. Specifically, RCMS is currently developing a direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method for subsonic nanoscale gas flows. Other projects include external flow analysis of heavy vehicles to reduce fuel consumption, and numerical investigation on performance and stability of axial compressors used in aircraft engines and gas turbines.

In a welcome address, Rector Nust Engr Muhammad Asghar said, “This will give an impetus for collaborative research between universities and other research organizations within the country and abroad.” and explained that the new facility will inspire scholars studying abroad to return to Pakistan.

Takeaway

Pakistan’s investment in terascale computing exhibits a willingness to promote scientific research – a forward-leaning strategy for a developing nation on the cusp of becoming industrialized. Unlike India’s HPC plans, Pakistan is not attempting to join the ‘supercomputing elite’ here, but rather to promote science collaborations, while creating an incentive for Pakistani researchers and engineers who work abroad to return to the country.


http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2012-03-07/pakistan_deploys_132-teraflop_supercomputer.html
Riaz Haq said…
Here's an AP report on increased spending and focus on education in Pakistan:

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says international donors have pledged to provide Pakistan with about a billion dollars over the next three years to help it provide education to millions of out-of-school children.

Now a United Nations special envoy on global education, Brown said Saturday in Islamabad that the global community will partner with Pakistan in financing the biggest education expansion in the country's history.

Pakistan recently doubled its education budget, from two to four percent of its gross domestic product.

Brown says the goal is to provide education to more than 55 million people over ten years old who are illiterate in Pakistan.


http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/donors-pledge-billion-pakistan-education-23112596
Riaz Haq said…
Sindh pushes female literacy via cellphones:

..The six-month program, expected to start this year, will be aimed at girls and women ages 15 to 25 in rural areas, the senior program manager for the digital literacy project, Ghulam Nabi Leghari, said.

It will focus initially on women who have never attended school. A female coordinator will visit selected candidates' homes to give weekly classes and regular lessons will be sent to them by cellular phone.

"Initially the program will be sending text messages to the female students. If they and their families agree to send them, then classroom teaching will begin," Leghari told UPI Next.

The classroom phase would involve three hours of work a day, six days a week for two months. In the third month, students would receive cellphones and would be able to send and receive Sindhi-language text messages, using software developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and a local telecommunications company.

"Learners will be selected on the basis of whether they are semiliterate. This criteria may be relaxed in … some special cases. Around 750 cellphone sets will be provided to learners, 30 for teachers, 10 for coordinators and 10 for monitoring purposes," Leghari said.

He said students in the program would be able to send text messages free for four months and that an organization would be hired to translate messages in Urdu -- Pakistan's national language and the language of the original training materials -- into Sindhi, and handle other functions related to the project, including training teachers.

Shaista Sattar, a 25-year-old woman who has never attended school, said the program could have a positive impact on the lives of rural Pakistani girls and women:

"It is very important that girls will be trained to use the cellular phones and how to write and send text messages," Sattar told UPI Next.

"Besides," she said, "women and girls will also be able to receive education through cellphones. They'll be able to take their lessons whenever they have free time."

Provincial Senior Minister for Education and Literacy Nisar Ahmed Khuhro told UPI Next that female literacy is important in any country's development, and in regions where female literacy is low, speedy programs need to be implemented.

The provincial Education Department is planning to start mobile-based literacy programs in three districts -- Jacobabad, Shaheed Benazirabad and Thatta -- where female literacy rates are the lowest. Each district will have 10 centers, where the educational content of the text messages will be prepared and sent to students.

"The main purpose is to open 30 centers for female adult literacy to help female learners improve their acquired basic literacy skills through mobile phones, and apply these skills for their own betterment as well as the betterment of other females of the area, and improve the overall living standard of the village or community," the minister said.

Interactive sessions using computers and the Internet will be used in addition to mobile phones, he added

---
"Currently, the biggest challenge for Sindh is out-of-school children. More than 50 percent of children are out of school. Keeping in view these challenges, Sindh has to come up with out-of-box solutions to improve the literacy rate of the province," the report, issued by the provincial government's education management information program known as SEMIS, states.

Sindh has 47,557 schools, of which 42,328 are functional and 5,229 are closed, including 3,995 temporarily closed and 1,234 permanently closed, SEMIS data shows.

The availability of teachers was described as "worrisome." Nearly 20,000 schools have one teacher only, resulting in schools having to teach multiple grades together, while 9,103 schools have two teachers.




Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2014/03/29/Pakistani-program-would-raise-female-literacy-by-cellphone/51392269920323/
Riaz Haq said…
Excerpt of World Bank report titled: " Using Low-Cost Private Schools to Fill the Education Gap
An impact evaluation of a program in Pakistan"



"Private schools in Pakistan, long catering to children of the country’s elite, have become popular among the poor thanks to the spread of low-cost private schools. More than a third of all children are now enrolled in private school, where tuition averages less than $5 a month in rural villages, a small fraction of average household income"

Low-cost private schools in Pakistan are proving very successful at attracting students—boys and girls—and teaching them effectively for less money than it costs to run a government school. Some of the lower costs come from hiring teachers who receive lower salaries than government school
teachers, but this doesn’t appear to be hurting the quality of education. On the contrary, given the stronger accountability and greater teaching and learning support offered to program-supported private schools in Sindh, students did
substantially better on tests than children whose only option was a government school.
There is still more to learn to create and support programs that expand educational access and improve quality.

Children who go to school develop the skills and
knowledge needed to do better in life. It also gives
children—and their parents—the chance to build
aspirations. The evaluation found that going to a
program-supported private school didn’t just give
children a better education, but it gave them the
chance to dream bigger.

In urban areas of Punjab, World Bank researchers are planning to evaluate the impacts of vouchers on enrollment of out-of-school slum kids, an initiative of the Punjab government
under its second Education Sector Reform Program, supported by the Bank through IDA financing. The vouchers will be good for low-cost private schools, which will have to meet minimum levels of learning to receive voucher children. Another evaluation, supported by the World Bank
Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF), will measure the impacts of a program to encourage improved functioning of low-cost private schools and expand their use in Pakistan through special grants, loans and equity financing, doing
away with the need to rely on government money.


http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/09/17/000442464_20130917141021/Rendered/PDF/810760BRI0E2P00Box0379828B00PUBLIC0.pdf
Riaz Haq said…
India College and University Education Stats:


Key Results of the AISHE 2011‐12 (Provisional)
 Survey covers entire Higher Education Institutions in the country. Institutions
are categorised in 3 broad Categories; University, College and Stand‐Alone
Institutions. Lists of 642 Universities, 34908 colleges and 11356 Stand Alone
Institutions have been prepared during the survey.
 In addition to the actual response received during AISHE 2011‐12, data has
been pooled from the AISHE 2010‐11 for the Institutions whose name existed
in 2011‐12 but has not submitted data so far. Thus the results are based on 601
Universities, 21158 Colleges and 6702 Stand Alone Institutions. Out of 601
universities, 238 are affiliating.
 Whole survey was conducted through online mode for which a dedicated
portal (http://aishe.gov.in) has been developed. The e‐version of DCF expands
according to the structure/size of the Institution. No investigator is sent to the
Institution to collect the data. One unique feature is that the filled in DCFs are
always available on the portal, which can be seen by the Institutions and
higher level authorities.
 There are 83 Technical, 33 Agriculture, 24 Medical, 17 law and 10 Veterinary
Universities.
 The top 6 States in terms of highest number of colleges in India are Uttar
Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Tamil
Nadu.
 Bangalore district tops in terms of number of colleges with 924 colleges
followed by Jaipur with 544 colleges. Top 50 districts have about 36% of
colleges.
 College density, i.e. the number of colleges per lakh eligible population
(population in the age‐group 18‐23 years) varies from 6 in Bihar to 64 in
Puducherry as compared to All India average of 25.  
 73% Colleges are privately managed; 58% Private‐unaided and 15% Private‐
aided. Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, both have more than 85% Private‐
unaided colleges, whereas, Bihar has only 6% and Assam 10% Private‐
unaided colleges.
 Total enrolment in higher education has been estimated to be 28.56 million
with 15.87 million boys and 12.69 million girls. Girls constitute 44.4% of the
total enrolment. 

http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/statistics/AISHE2011-12P_1.pdf
Riaz Haq said…
At the time of its independence in 1947, the nascent nation of Pakistan had only one university, the University of Punjab. By 1997, the number of universities had risen to 35, of which 3 were federally administered and 22 were under the provincial governments, with a combined enrollment of 71,819 students. There were also 10 private universities. The universities are responsible for graduate (postgraduate) education leading to master's and doctoral degrees in a variety of fields. Most universities have their own faculty in the various departments but many use senior faculty from the colleges to participate in the teaching program at the master's level as well as for supervising students at the doctoral level. The trend is, however, to concentrate all postgraduate work in the university departments in order to maximize the benefits of teacher-student interaction on a daily basis. This has tended to limit the college faculty exclusively to undergraduate education, which serves as a disincentive for them to conduct higher-level research or writing.

Read more: Pakistan - Higher Education - Universities, Colleges, Students, and University - StateUniversity.com http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1146/Pakistan-HIGHER-EDUCATION.html#ixzz3gG4rjO2H
Riaz Haq said…
The latest presently available enrollment statistics are for 2004-2005. They amount to 534,000 or 2.5% of the eligible age group. If affiliated colleges are included, the number of students the higher education sectors increases to
807,000 which is about 3.8% of the eligible age group.


http://eacpe.org/content/uploads/2014/02/Essay-On-Pakistan-Higher-Education.pdf
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan is facing a shortage of manpower in technical and vocational education as only 255,636 students are enrolled in 3,125 different vocational education and training institutes’ set-up across the country. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report, Pakistan presently had 64 technicians per one million population, while the same figure for the technically advanced countries was in the range of 1,500 to 2,500.

http://www.hedfpk.com/blog/posts/vocational-education-and-training-for-pakistan-students/
Riaz Haq said…
Education Achievement by Religion according to Pew Research

http://www.pewforum.org/2016/12/13/religion-and-education-around-the-world/

Jews are more highly educated than any other major religious group around the world, while Muslims and Hindus tend to have the fewest years of formal schooling, according to a Pew Research Center global demographic study that shows wide disparities in average educational levels among religious groups.

These gaps in educational attainment are partly a function of where religious groups are concentrated throughout the world. For instance, the vast majority of the world’s Jews live in the United States and Israel – two economically developed countries with high levels of education overall. And low levels of attainment among Hindus reflect the fact that 98% of Hindu adults live in the developing countries of India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

But there also are important differences in educational attainment among religious groups living in the same region, and even the same country. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, Christians generally have higher average levels of education than Muslims. Some social scientists have attributed this gap primarily to historical factors, including missionary activity during colonial times. (For more on theories about religion’s impact on educational attainment, see Chapter 7.)


Drawing on census and survey data from 151 countries, the study also finds large gender gaps in educational attainment within some major world religions. For example, Muslim women around the globe have an average of 4.9 years of schooling, compared with 6.4 years among Muslim men. And formal education is especially low among Hindu women, who have 4.2 years of schooling on average, compared with 6.9 years among Hindu men.

Yet many of these disparities appear to be decreasing over time, as the religious groups with the lowest average levels of education – Muslims and Hindus – have made the biggest educational gains in recent generations, and as the gender gaps within some religions have diminished, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis.
Riaz Haq said…
From Dawn's story "The missing third"



Of all children between the ages of 5-16, the highest enrolment rate is observed among nine years olds (82 per cent) followed by 11 year olds (81 per cent). It is interesting to note that the same trend is observed for boys and girls virtually across the range of five to 16 years. The only difference is percentage of enrolment of each age group is higher for boys than girls.

The data indicates two underlying themes:

• First time enrolments happen later than required — The data shows that enrolment rates pick up steadily from five years to nine years. It shows that more and more children are enrolled into the system much beyond the age of five. It also indicates lack of emphasis on early childhood education leading up to class 1.

• Drop outs start to happen between 9-11 years of age — The data shows a steady decline in enrolment percentages after 11 years, as children go beyond the primary school age. Possible reasons are limited access to middle and high schools which are typically fewer and farther compared to primary schools and rising opportunity costs.



https://www.dawn.com/news/1643918

Riaz Haq said…
Project OoSC Launched To Empower India’s 17.8 Million Out Of School Children, The Highest Total Number Of Children Out Of School In South Asia

https://indiaeducationdiary.in/project-oosc-launched-empower-indias-17-8-million-school-children-highest-total-number-children-school-south-asia/

Gorakhpur: Gorakhpur local and the multi-award-wining, international educationalist Amreesh Chandra, has announced the launch of Project OoSC (Out of School Children), a breakthrough initiative with a mission to enrol, educate and empower 127 million children out of school in the Commonwealth nations with a special focus on India’s 17.8 million Out of School Children between in ages 5-13 years, the highest number amongst other South Asian countries.

The project will establish 50 container schools across four states in India in its very first year, with the first container school is being established in the Gorakhpur District of Uttar Pradesh. Gorakhpur will soon see the light of the day as the work on the development of the container school has already begun with the laying down of the foundation stone to commence proposed construction. The container school upon its establishment will benefit hundreds of children in the village who had to discontinue their education for lack of resources and other infrastructural constraints.

The project that is based on the premise that “education is a basic right” goes a step further to ensure education through investing in better infrastructure and resources, such as the use of shipping container classrooms. Thanks to swift assembly and the ability to transport easily, Project OoSC’s use of shipping container classrooms helps to install infrastructure for education and enables more children to attend school. In addition, the project will help to ensure high standards of training to educators to enable the spread of quality education and to spark a literacy movement in remote communities across the commonwealth.

Project OoSC lays a strong emphasis on training teachers to ensure quality instruction in the classroom. Another broad objective of the project is to start a literacy movement amongst communities that are widely ignored. This will be achieved by way of establishing container literacy homes or libraries inspiring young people learn more through providing access to reading material. The project is strongly banking on community participation for its success and the enthusiasm of the people during the launch of the first container school bears a testimony to the potential benefits that it will generate for people in the region.
Riaz Haq said…
#Pakistani convicted murderer takes top #school score, wins #scholarship. Shah is one of 1,200 inmates studying in Central #Prison #Karachi, but his success is unparalleled, said Saeed Soomro -- deputy superintendent of the prison. #convict #education https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/22/asia/pakistani-murder-scholarship-win-intl/index.html

A Pakistani inmate serving a life sentence for murder in an overcrowded Karachi prison has won a scholarship for further study after taking one of the highest scores in the city's higher secondary school exams last year.

Syed Naeem Shah, 35, scored the highest in the general high school exams among private candidates - that is, among non-traditional students -- last year in Pakistan's largest city, winning a scholarship for further studies from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP).
"What I have achieved while languishing in jail is not possible if one does not have conviction," Shah told Reuters in an interview in Central Prison Karachi, built by the British in 1899 in the port city in southeastern Pakistan.
The prison, like many others in the country, is notorious for being overcrowded, holding nearly 6,000 inmates in space meant for 2,400. Pakistan prisons overall are at 130% of capacity and are poorly ventilated, with insufficient beds and limited access to medicines, safe water and bathing facilities, according to Amnesty International.

Speaking in a classroom inside the prison grounds, Shah said he enjoyed school as a child but that his family could not afford to continue his education. In jail, older inmates who were also taking classes motivated him and helped him prepare for exams.
Shah is one of 1,200 inmates studying in Central Prison Karachi, but his success is unparalleled, said Saeed Soomro -- deputy superintendent of the prison.
"His results are (also) tantamount to our success," Soomro said, in giving him the opportunity to study and providing him with books and materials.
Shah was sentenced to life -- 25 years in Pakistan -- in 2018 for the shooting and killing of another man in a personal disagreement in 2010. Years spent as a prisoner on trial, plus time off for academic achievements, good behavior and blood donations, leaves him with about six years to serve.
Shah still has to pass an entrance exam to formally take up the scholarship, an ICAP official said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorized to talk to media.
The scholarships -- of 1 million rupees or about $5,700 -- are offered to students earning the top four scores in intermediate exams, regardless of whether "they are in jail or outside," the ICAP official said.
"I feel it will be very difficult for me to pursue this scholarship from prison," Shah said, given the technical and specialized subjects he will be pursuing.
Even before his exam success, Shah said he had filed an appeal against his conviction that is pending in a high court in the southern province of Sindh.
"I appeal to the president of Pakistan, prime minister and chief executive of Sindh province to consider my case for remission."

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