Evaluating the Role and Impact of Private Partnerships (PPPS) in Education Through Subsidizing Low-cost Private Schools in Sindh, Pakistan

• In Event: Requestioning Autonomy: Placing Learners at the Centre

Proposal

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education are a global phenomenon of education reform that is increasingly being implemented in several countries, including Pakistan. There are different manifestations and designs of PPPs in different regions, based on their countries’ policies and the emerging role of international actors. Generally, the role of International Organizations (IOs) and development partners has been substantial in promoting PPPs in developing countries to meet the UN EFA goals and later revised Sustainable Development Goals-4 (Robertson, 2012; Steiner-Khamsi & Draxler, 2018). The Sindh province of Pakistan is continuously contracting with the private sector to add more PPP schools to its system. Sindh is the second largest province in Pakistan with 24% of the total population, but it has only a 56% literacy rate, with a vast disparity in urban-to-rural population distribution and uneven results in male-to-female education. The PPPs are perceived as a comparatively efficient way to achieve the target of access and quality in education (Government of Pakistan [GoP], 2017). In 2013, the Sindh Government also passed a Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act. This legislation also exerted pressure to bring innovative solutions to the poor education system to maximize enrollment (GoS SELD, 2017). The option of PPPs was found to be innovative and received support from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (LaRocque & Sipahimalani-Rao, 2019). The Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) a quasi-government autonomous organization was mandated to work in less-developed areas and marginalized province populations by opening Low-cost private schools under PPP mode. These schools have been currently named Foundation Assisted Schools (FAS). There are currently 2,673 FAS schools, having 725,000 enrolled students, and 20,959 teachers (GoS SEF, 2021).
The focus of this study was to investigate the success (or lack thereof) of PPPs in education in achieving the goal of equitable access to quality education, in this instance by evaluating PPP reforms in Sindh, Pakistan, in the form of FAS, where the government provides the subsidies to low-cost private schools through the Sindh Education Foundation. Most existing research and discussions about PPPs are theoretical and have focused on PPP policies and outcomes within advantaged contexts and review PPPs without any (or with very little) contextual and comparative analysis (Verger, 2012). The above foci/approaches do not yield specific and useful information regarding the implementation or efficacy of PPPs in developing contexts like Pakistan (Gideon & Unterhalter, 2021; Verger, 2012). Related, very little attention has been given to “what works,” “how,” and “in which context” with respect to PPPs in education. The study was guided by research questions intended to evaluate to what extent, how, in what way, and for whom PPPs in education improve access, quality, and equity in education in the context of Sindh, Pakistan. The Realist Evaluation ( of Pawson & Tilley, 1997) theoretical framework was employed, which allowed for an evaluation of the above-mentioned PPP reforms based on contextually designed objectives. Since PPPs in education are based on the market approach in education so I am applying choice theory (which gives parents the option to exit) and new public management concepts to address three main research questions (Ben-Porath & Johanek, 2019; Verger & Curran, 2014). The study design is based on a mixed methods case study (Creswell, 2015), in this instance, the data include a review of policy documents, secondary quantitative data sets from, the Annual Status of Education Report Pakistan (ASER, 2019), Student Achievement Test (SAT) Sindh, and responses gathered from 22 semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with the PPP stakeholders, including policy developers, school operators/managers, teachers, and parents. The collected data of the study were analyzed based on the Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) model of realist evaluation (Verger, et al., 2016). The quantitative data variables were selected and analyzed descriptively and through a regression model, while qualitative data were coded, and themes were generated based on CMO configuration. After analyzing the above-mentioned multiple data sets in qualitative and quantitative formats, I concurrently integrated and triangulated (see Creswell, 2015) qualitative and quantitative data and presented results tables, charts, and quotations for interpretation.
The findings of this study have been divided into two broader themes and several subthemes. The first broader theme is focused on evaluating educational reform policy through PPPs in Sindh including various stakeholders’ understanding of PPP policy and various actors’ roles, the governance of PPP models, their funding mechanism, and the mechanism of accountability in Sindh. The second broader theme of this study is focused on outcomes—that is, the extent to which PPP models in education served to enhance access, quality, efficiency, and equity in education in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the context of the Sindh Province. This study’s findings indicate that despite several contextual challenges and flaws in institutional mechanisms, PPPs in education through subsidizing private schools have some advantages over government-run schools—specifically, they appear often to promote better governance of schools through autonomy and decentralization, resulting in improved accountability, monitoring, and evaluation. However, the broader impact of PPP reform still does not clearly result in increased access, improved overall educational quality, or greater equity. The foundation assisted/subsidized PPP models in Sindh employed low-paid, untrained, and contractual teachers to promote the narrative of cost-efficiency. Ultimately it ends up getting more teachers attrition, and no improvement in quality. As these schools' funding is based on a number of the students enrolled, it has been reported that they bring more easy targeted kids even from nearby government schools and put less effort into persistently challenged area kids. The new policy to open schools even in the city and half a kilometer surrounding the government schools affects the nearby government schools, which also raises the question of the sustainability of the model. This study further opens a window for potential researchers, policymakers, and concerned stakeholders to better understand what works, for whom, and in what circumstances and may support the design of a better regulatory framework of PPPs beyond the piecemeal approach to education reform currently in place.

Author

• Gul Muhammad Rind, Sukkur IBA University