Our Professional Development Centres in North and Chitral have partnered with the Aga Khan Foundation Pakistan to transform educational opportunities for 10,500 girls in Chitral and Diamer districts of northern Pakistan. Over a period of three years (2019-2022) the project will adopt a range of interventions, which will help remove barriers preventing girls attending school, increase demand among communities and families, improve the supply of quality education, and importantly, empower girls themselves to manage these complex challenges through leadership and life skills.
The overall objective of CPESG is to improve learning outcomes and develop greater self-esteem, confidence and life skills of the girls. In order to create an environment that is supportive of girls’ education, the project will build the capacity of approximately 600 teachers (mainly women) and 1,500 members of school management committees as well as wider community members, and offer a flexible response fund for communities to implement locally-driven, innovative solutions that breakdown barriers to girls’ access to education.
Classified as economically, ecologically and socially fragile, the districts of Chitral and Diamer are located in the northernmost remote regions of Pakistan and characterized by mountainous terrain. Education service delivery in these regions is particularly weak, especially in relation to girls’ education. 36% of primary school age children in Diamer are out of school, of which a shocking 84% are girls. In KP, where Chitral is located, only 58% children of primary school age are attending schools. Access to secondary schooling is even more constrained. In KP only 40% of children of secondary school age are in school and in GB just 35% (MICS survey KP 2018 and GB 2017). In Diamer, this is much worse: 78% children are out of secondary school, of which 57% are girls.
Owing to major differences in the status of girls’ education in the two districts, the target age ranges will be different for each district. In Chitral, CPESG will target girls in the last two years of primary school (grades 4 to 5) and the first three years of secondary middle school (grades 6 to 8). These years represent a critical period of transition and growing into adolescence during which many girls leave the education system. In the very conservative district of Diamer, where enrolment for girls is extraordinarily low, the project will target girls in grades 1 to 5, attending kachhi (temporary) home schools set up by the government to improve the quality of learning and enable the transition to purpose built schools as they arise.
CPESG will increase access to quality educational opportunities for girls by addressing enrolment, retention and achievement through three levels of interventions:
- Individual level: Establish girls’ only clubs, through which they have access to mentoring, learning resources, and leadership and life skills training to improve self-agency and confidence to overcome barriers that often exclude them from meaningful learning opportunities;
- Community level: Work with parents and community members to improve their attitudes, beliefs, and practices towards girls’ education as well as provide a flexible response fund to implement locally-driven solutions to address barriers to girls’ education; and
- Education system level: Train and mentor teachers and educators (government functionaries) on child-centred, inclusive, and gender-responsive teaching and learning in formal and non-formal classrooms.
This approach draws on AKF and AKU IED’s global and local experiences as well as international literature on ‘what works’ in girls’ education. For example, the Flexible Response Fund was conceptualised by AKF to address barriers to girls’ education in Afgahnistan. Owing to its success, the UN Girls’ Education Initiative recognized it as a global best practice in 2015. AKU IED’s approach to teacher capacity building entails not only face-to-face tutoring, but also on-going mentorship support; this is an approach that has demonstrated impact globally and most recently was evaluated by APHRC as the most impactful and cost-effective approach to teacher training in East Africa.
This project is aligned with the Government of Pakistan’s priorities within its National Education Policy Framework 2018 in which it states that it wishes to ‘equip its young people with knowledge, creativity, critical thinking and leadership skills so that they can make the right choices for themselves, their country and play a responsible role as global citizens’. The four priorities are to a) address out of school children (over half of whom are girls), including at the secondary level and the rural/urban and poor/wealthy disparities; b) to address the quality of education; c) to bring in uniformity of education to break down the inequalities arising from different school systems, the government schools being at the bottom of the pile; and d) to improve higher education and skills education. CPESG addresses the first three priorities directly.
