Education reforms

BY TAHIR ANDRABI AND ISABEL HARBAUGH MACDONALD | 5/8/2019 12:00:00

AM
THE National Education Policy Framework launched under the government`s
first 100-day plan calls for a number of changes to Pakistan`s educational system,
such as a tech-based smart schools system, an educational volunteer programme
and an increase in the number of non-formal schools.

While the proposed reforms would be a major change, they are but a new chapter
in a long, active history of education reforms.

A data visualisation in the online version of this article shows that, over the past
two decades, Pakistan has been prolific in passing education reforms.

Vigorous activity in the policy arena has also been accompanied by a striking rise
in education spending. National spending on education rose 160 per cent from
2011-2017.

Given the magnitude of changes to both policy and funding, improvements to

educational outcomes seemed inevitable. But measures from the independent
assessment organisation ASER show that test scores have fluctuated over the past
five years and show only modest growth in 2018 certainly not commensurate
with the improvements in policy and influx of funding.

There has been some improvement: today, most Pakistani children attend school
at some point in their lives and more are persisting on to secondary school and
university. Still, around 30pc of students do not reach sixth grade, and enrolment
lags behind relatively poorer countries in Africa and Asia that have achieved near
universal primary enrolment. Why haven`t past reforms made more of a
difference? Our analysis of the effects of some of the reforms over the past two
decades, conducted in collaboration with our colleague Jishnu Das at the World
Bank, reveals some of the forces that limit policy effectiveness.

First, unintended consequences. Reforms can hurt just as much or more than they
help. For example, the Punjab Examination Commission (PEC) exam, introduced
in 2005, was intended to provide critical data on learning and equity. However,
because the exam was conducted in February, it appeared to compress the part of
the school year when students are likely to learn the most: anecdotal evidence
suggests that the months of concentrated learning were reduced to August
through December.

Although we do not have the data to understand whether learning would have
been greater in the absence of PEC, it is clear that shortening of the school year
was an unintended consequence, whose ramifications areillunderstood.

This is not intended to suggest that this reform should not have been
implemented; collecting data on student learning is critical to improving learning.
Rather, thisshows that policymakers must carefully study the consequences of
reforms and implement simultaneous policies to mitigate adverse effects.

Second, contradictory effects. When so many reforms are developed

independently, they are prone to contradicting each other.

For example, provinces have made efforts over the years to empower schools and
parents to make decisions, such as by establishing school councils that give
parents and communities a role in deciding how some education funds should be
spent. At the same time, the government has increased school monitoring and
aimed to standardise school inputs, which reduces the decisionmaking authority
of individual schools.

These efforts at decentralisation and centralisation often prevent reforms on

either end of the spectrum from generating a full impact. Policymal(ers should
pay greater attention to how each change is likely to interact with the broader
education system. With so many overlapping changes, we don`t know which
reforms have been effective and which have led to further problems. But there is
away to find out.

The government can try out reforms with a smaller group of schools before
implementing them across the province or country. Pilot test-ing allows schools
and teachers in the test group to provide critical feedbacl(that can be used to
improve the final policy design.

Education studies in Punjab point to the power of pilot testing. In 2004, our
research group conducted an experiment to give parents and schools a `report
card` showing average test scores for all public and private schools in a village.

We were able to show that sharing information on learning quality led to higher
test scores and enrolment and lower school fees.
Drawing insights, the Punjab government later decided to distribute semi-annual
report cards with performance data on all public schools to help parents and
school councils hold schools more accountable for learning growth.

The current administration has a chance to take a rigorous approach to education

reform, different from that taken by past governments.

After all, learning from the past is the bedrock of education.• Tahir Andrabi is
co-founder of the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan.

Isabel Harbaugh Macdonald is a doctoral student.