Lahore School of Economics

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Struggling Against the Odds of Poverty, Access and Gender-Secondary Schooling for Girls
March 20, 2013

While there has been improvement in schooling outcomes for girls in the decade 2001-2011, progress is uneven within Pakistan. Rural girls lag far behind urban girls and progress across provinces is uneven. The transition to secondary school, in ways much more critical for improving employability and reproductive health and other outcomes, shows even more uneven progress by province and income class. Questions about the preference for public versus private schools and the actual choice of schools available to girls in most rural areas need to be answered if we are serious about a rapid escalation of secondary school enrollments for girls.

Dr. Zeba Sathar

The Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) 2001-02 and Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Surveys (PSLM) 2007-08 and 2010-11 are going to be utilized to look at patterns in this transition. Access is likely to be the main driving force behind the transition to secondary level schooling. Initial findings reflect the almost total reliance on public schools for 10-14 year old girls. This suggests that private secondary schools are not an option for girls in rural areas. The next major intervening factor is household income level - public schools for girls are the only choice it seems even for the rich families. Data also suggest that girls in poor and large families are competing against their brothers and other siblings for limited resources.

Most important secondary school is only an option on completion of primary school and choices are greater at the primary school level. We study the choice of secondary school as condition on factors driving primary school completion. Regional patterns reflect the expansion of private schools in Punjab and KP and not so much in Sindh and Balochistan.

We will utilize extensive rich data from a Population Council study from 16 communities of Punjab and KP and Sindh with detailed information on numbers and quality of schools within and outside the community and schooling outcomes. This will supplement the main analysis from the PSLMS. We will run regressions to observe the weight of three set of factors i.e., choice and distance to assess the transition from primary to secondary school for girls.

About the presenter:

Dr. Zeba Sathar received her Master’s from London School of Economics and PhD from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has spent more than 15 years at the national premier research institution, the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics where she held the position of Chief of Research in Demography. She also has considerable international experience having worked with the World Bank, World Fertility Survey, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Population Council in New York and in Pakistan. She has published widely in books and peer reviewed journals and has diverse academic interests in population ranging from the more pure demographic topics of fertility and mortality to issues of gender and their association with demographic processes.

Dr. Sathar is currently working for the Preparation of 10th Five Year People’s Plan 2010-15 and Taskforce on Population as a National Development Priority in conjunction with the Planning Commission, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad. She is the first elected member from Pakistan on governing council of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). She has worked with the Population Council from 1994 and is currently its Country Director in Pakistan. Dr. Sathar received in recognition of her meritorious services to the development sector in Pakistan; she received the award of Tamgha-I-Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan on March 23, 2006.

Labels: Management of Pakistan Economy