For over 50 years, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has been the channel for Canada’s economic and social development assistance to Pakistan. CIDA works with the Government of Pakistan (GoP), the country’s civil society and the private sector to respond to local initiatives aimed at reducing poverty in a sustainable manner, particularly towards development objectives that:

enhance democratic local governance;
increase access to effective social services, specifically basic education & health/HIV/AIDS for poor women & girls;
promote gender equality, which is an objective as well as a cross-cutting theme for CIDA’s program.

These programming priorities reflect Canada ’s interest in seeing Pakistan meet its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly those related to:

poverty reduction;
universal primary education;
gender equality and the empowering of women;

A number of educational reforms have been introduced at the Federal and Provincial levels to enhance access and quality of basic education. Nevertheless, status of basic education in the country continues to be a cause of concern. A variety of factors contributing to this situation include: economic, social and cultural factors; physical factors including dilapidated schools, scarcity of teaching learning resources, and un-attractive classrooms; qualification, training, supervision and teacher motivation; teachers’ attitude towards students; mobility issues especially for girl students & female teachers; outmoded curricula, abstract and unattractive textbooks.

The Government of Pakistan’s (GoP) challenge remains to be able to overcome these factors in a strategic manner over relatively short time-spans and with comparatively restricted resources. GoP is currently attaching top priority to Education For All (EFA) commitments made at the World Education Forum in Dakar , Senegal in April 2000, later reaffirmed in the education targets set in the Millennium Development Goals. The country has a ten-year Perspective Development Plan (2001-11) to visualize the long term macro-economic and spectral growth strategies. Poverty Reduction and Human Development is the priority area of the Plan. Similarly, National Education Policy (NEP) 1998-2010 also focusses on the improvement in the quality of administration and teaching in the schools through decentralization, accountability and intensive trainings for management staff and teachers. To take some of the recommendations of NEP forward, the government has launched various education reform initiatives. The most important of them all is the Education Sector Reforms (ESR) Action Plan which was designed through a consultative process in 2001. ESR is the comprehensive sector-wide program to address the issues of the educational attainment, lack of access to schooling, and educational inequities by gender and location.

In the Punjab , primary education has over the years attracted the major portion of the Education budget. The recent rescheduling of foreign debt has created additional fiscal space allowing the provincial government to expand spending in the social sector within which Education remains a major beneficiary. The Punjab Education Sector Reform Program (PESRP) is being implemented with World Bank assistance. It prioritizes enhanced enrollment through two major initiatives, namely (i) a Rs.200 monthly stipend to girls who maintain 80% attendance in 15 selected districts, and (ii) free textbooks to all pupils from grade I to V. In the academic year 2003-4, 175,000 girls received stipends amounting to Rs.334 million, while textbooks costing Rs.494 million per year benefit 7.25 million students.

Initiatives such as these, aim to create an education-friendly culture and learning environment at the community level and contribute towards reducing the traditional resistance among parents to send their children, particularly girls to school. This is especially relevant since Pakistan ’s dilemma lies not in first-time enrollment of school-going children, but in retaining them in school long enough to assure tangible attainment. Primary education has remained a priority program area for the federal and provincial governments as well as donor agencies for many years now.

In April 2002, CIDA launched its Basic Education Action Plan, committing itself to the goals of the Dakar Framework for Action and thereby to universal access to and completion of, primary education, improvements in the quality of education for learners of all ages, and equality in all aspects of the education system. CIDA through its development assistance program for Pakistan decided to provide a grant for improving Pakistan ’s basic education through the Canada-Pakistan Basic Education Project (CPBEP). The project focuses on federal level institutions, and the province of Punjab along with selected districts. The duration of the Project is five years (April 2006 to March 2011) with a financial layout of CD $10 million.

The Design and Appraisal Phase of the Project was undertaken from August 2004 to January 2005. During that phase, the project team carried out intensive consultations with the stakeholders, these consultations further defined the project dimensions. Based on consultations and in-depth analyses within the current context of the education sector in Pakistan , the team came up with rationale for project goal and objectives along with a logical framework analysis. Cognizant of the areas being currently covered by the government and other donors in Curriculum Wing, FCE, DSD and UoE, the Team decided to intervene in only those areas which were not being addressed by other donors. The objective is to ensure a more even spread of donor and government resources and enhance efficient use and impact by avoiding duplication and maximize synergies.

The overall goal of the Project is to improve the quality and delivery of basic education in Pakistan , especially for the female population, and to increase access to education by disadvantaged groups. The purpose of the Project is to improve the quality of primary education for boys and girls in Pakistan through a focus on improvements to educational systems, particularly in selected districts in Punjab .

At the impact level, key results from CPBEP will be:

improved gender-sensitive basic education policies and practices implemented;
improved basic education systems and institutions effectively delivering services; and
increased access to basic education by disadvantaged groups
Expected outcomes of the Project are:
strengthened education system and institutions that enhance the quality of and equity in primary educ ation;
enhanced learner-centered, gender-sensitive and girl-friendly teacher education better meeting the needs of primary students     and their communities.
Project Output and Outcome Results

The Project outputs focus on the institutional strengthening of Curriculum Wing, Federal College of Education, Directorate of Staff Development, UoE and its associated GCETs/UCEs as well as District Education offices in Multan and Lodhran. As regards teacher education, assistance is planned for practicum and internship programs.

In order to effectively achieve the Project results at the impact, outcome as well as output levels, the Project has been divided into three components i.e. Institutional Strengthening, Teacher Education and Project Management. Specific activities, expected results, and indicators for these results within these components have been identified, assessed, refined, and finalized through stakeholder consultation so that local ownership and sustainability of results could be enhanced.

The Project components are designed to function at three levels i.e. federal, provincial and district. At the federal level, the Project focus is on Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education and the Federal College of Education. The provincial level focuses on the Punjab province and would involve Department of Education, Directorate of Staff Development, University of Education and its associated GCETs/UCEs. The district level would involve the district governments and the education offices of selected districts of Multan and Lodhran.

The overall goal and objectives of the project are in line with the National Education Policy (NEP). The strategies designed to achieve the project objectives also take into account the Education Sector Reforms Action Plan (2001-2004) and the Punjab Education Sector Reforms Project (PESRP).

The NEP focuses on improving basic education, and recognizing its contributory role to higher education, proposes new initiatives for improving the education delivery system and promoting knowledge resource creation by expanding research capabilities of institutions. NEP articulates a provision for improving education management and supervision through decentralized and accountable service delivery. It highlights the need for revamping in-service training for presently employed teachers as an implementation strategy. Stating that “leading colleges of education in the country will also be strengthened to cater the expanding needs of [teacher education] in the country”, the NEP outlines the following objectives to improve teacher education institutions:

enhance teacher training capacities;
develop viable policy and planning framework for teacher training; and
institutionalize in-service training programs for teachers and teacher educators.
The over arching goal of the project is gender equality which is being integrated through a gender equality strategy of the project.