Jul 25
10:30 am to 12:30 pm
SDPI, Seminar Hall, 38 Embassy Road, G-6/3, Islamabad
Speakers:
- Dr.Samina Qadir, Vice Chancellor, Fatima Jinnah Women University
- Dr.Shehryar Toru, Research Fellow, Sustainable Development Policy Institute
Pakistan dedicates a little over two percent of its GDP for public
education. While earmarked resource pie for providing quality education
to the country’s children is clearly insufficient, many a times, even
this small amount of funds remain unspent, resulting lack of
infrastructure and poor education delivery. The biased division of
resources results in compromised standard of education for girls and
inhabitants of rural areas. On top of it is overly centralized public
education mechanism which gives little room to communities concerned to
play their role in attainment of quality education delivery.
In the given backdrop, the SDPI, in collaboration with ILM Ideas
attempted to strengthen and empower communities and sensitized them on
their fundamental democratic right of holding public education providers
and respective political leadership accountable. This accountability,
as practiced, is expected to bridge the governance, resource, and
infrastructure gaps in public education delivery.
Working with the communities, the SDPI sought to educate them on
importance of education, especially girls’ education. It promoted the
importance of community involvement in school governance, and social
responsibility of all to make it sure that no school-going aged child is
remained non-enrolled in the targeted districts. Moreover, through
advocacy activities, it realized the role communities can play to
improve quality of education being delivered to their children at the
public schools.
In the seminar on Friday, July 25, the respective research team at the
SDPI will share the results of its endeavor on building local education
accountability mechanisms for controlling teachers’ absenteeism, holding
school drop outs, increasing enrollment and curbing rural-urban and
gender gaps in public education. It will also throw light on how this
idea can be scaled up and replicated to other districts.