PPP/Charter Schools and Gender Gaps in Education: An International Comparative Analysis of Global North and Global South

• In Event: Exploring gender dynamics in educational projects and settings

Proposal

The study examines how Public-Private Partnership (PPP)/charter schools interact with the gender gaps in education to test the assumption that PPP/charter schools operate in a gender-neutral way globally. This study consists of an international comparative analysis of two similar models of PPP/charter schools in two drastically different education contexts. While the extant literature has evaluated the impact of PPP/charter schools on racial and ethnic gaps there is little research on how these PPP/charter schools address the gender gaps in education. This qualitative study focuses on how school leaders make sense of gender gaps across international contexts in a neoliberal education system i.e., PPP/charter schools.
PPP/charter schools operate in a neoliberal education market and use market principles of accountability and competition, to provide an equitable education (Lubienski, 2003; Fryer, 2012; Jabbar, 2016; Afridi, 2018; Aslam, Rawal, & Saeed, 2017), that is inclusive of race, class, and gender. Advocates of charter schools state that these competitive, market forces lead PPP/charter schools to innovate, improve, and introduce education reforms to mitigate educational inequities. While advocates of PPP/charter schools’ claim that market forces lead to competition holding schools accountable, and reducing the gaps in education, it is yet to be seen how these PPP/charter schools address gender disparities in education (Corcoran & Jennings, 2016 ).
As gender disparities exist in education globally, PPP/charter school models also exist globally across the Global North and Global South, with the intention of mitigating inequities in education, yet there is little comparative literature that looks at how gender inequities in education are addressed by this global model of neoliberal education – PPP/charter schools. The gender gap in education is an important issue faced globally, by different countries in different contexts. In developed countries like the US, UK, Western Europe, and some of the middle-income and low-income regions, there has been a focus and concern regarding the performance of boys in education, known as the “boy turn” education problem (Weaver-Hightower, 2003). Boys are left behind in K-12 education in literacy engagement, have higher expulsion rates, have higher dropout rates, have higher ADHD diagnosis, and have lower college enrollment than girls. In majority of the cases in these developed countries, boys who lag behind in education are boys of color (Weaver-Hightower, 2003; UNESCO, 2022). However, in some developing countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, some low-income, high-poverty African countries, the gender gap has the opposite issue of the “girl child” education problem where girls lag in enrollment, have higher dropout rates, are outperformed by boys in literacy and numeracy (Annual Status of Education Report, 2020).
This is a comparative case study of two sites, one in the Global North – Arizona, USA and one in the Global South – Punjab, Pakistan, that have similar models of charter/PPP schools, with similar measures for accountability and checks and balances but different educational contexts with regards to gender. The World Bank has declared PPP education reform in Punjab, Pakistan as a success story which the report states should be replicated in other contexts (Afridi, 2018). In the US, Arizona has the largest percentage share of charter schools in the United States. The accountability measures for monitoring and evaluating PPP schools in Punjab are similar to the accountability measures for charter schools in Arizona, which makes this comparison an instructive context to examine how similar charter/PPP school models impact gender gaps in different contexts, specially where gender gaps are reverse. The research question this study investigates, is:
Q.How do PPP/Charter school leaders make meaning of their schools’ role in serving students from intersectional marginalized backgrounds with regards to gender and its intersections, in Punjab and Arizona, in their respective contexts?
The theoretical framework that is used to address this question is Sensemaking theory, which states that people construct their reality based on the meaning that they derive from their experiences, prior knowledge, beliefs, and the value system in their setting (Weick, 1995). Sensemaking helps understand how PPP/charter school leaders make meaning of the way their schools serve boys of color in the US and girls from lower SES in Pakistan. To conduct this study, data is collected through in-depth interviews of principals in PPP/charter schools in the two sites.
While the data analysis is still being conducted, some preliminary findings show that in Punjab, almost all principals said that girls performed better than boys in academics. This contrasts with what earlier literature stated. There was a variation in opinions on who performs better in sports and extracurricular activities. In Arizona, findings are mixed, where some principals say that boys and girls perform equally well, and others state that girls perform better.
In both Punjab and Arizona, many principals blamed the societal and cultural factors for boys’ lack of attention and rigor. In both sites, some principals stated that boys had additional responsibility of helping their parents earn for the family, especially those from lower SES. In Punjab, some principals stated that after school, girls were not allowed to go out of the house to play, so they do their homework diligently. While boys roam around in the streets to play sports and spend time with their friends, so they spend less time on their homework. However, some principals also said that girls have to help their mothers in household chores after school, but despite that added responsibility, they end up performing good at studies. Such a perception was not found in Arizona.
In Punjab, most principals stated that they have low dropout rates and students drop out only when the family moves out of the neighborhood, and this was true for both boys and girls. For Arizona, boys had higher dropout rates than girls, due to their behavior or sometimes added responsibility of earning an income. None of the principals either in Punjab or Arizona, thought that girls’ better academic performance had anything to do with the school being a PPP/charter school. They mostly attributed it to parents’ education, societal and cultural norms. Further analysis will lead to detailed findings and discussion.

Author

• Wajiha Saqib, University of Texas at Austin