Balochistan Education Sector Plan
BESP Table of Content
Introduction
The Balochistan Education Sector Plan (BESP) has been developed by the Policy and Planning Implementation Unit (PPIU) on the basis of a detailed ‘Situation Analysis’ undertaken from July 2011 to January 2012 with the assistance of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The document has been produced under the leadership of the Government of Balochistan and the Policy Planning and Implementation Unit (PPIU) acted as the coordinator for the entire process. Officials of the Government of Balochistan organized under various thematic groups prepared the policy options, strategies and finally the activities for implementation of prioritized areas. These groups had earlier also contributed to the ‘Situation Analysis’.
The Department of Education sees the BESP as the first step in a holistic reform effort envisioned by the Government of Balochistan. Successful implementation will lay the foundations for critical changes in the education sector and the provincial socio-economic development in the long run.
The Plan has been prepared in the backdrop of the 18th Amendment to the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The amendment has divested the federal government of all control of education in the provinces. A landmark change has been declaration of education as a fundamental right under Article 25A that requires ‘compulsory free education for all children between the ages of 5 and 16’ to be provided. The Article has a substantive impact on the future direction of education reforms and provides the guide for school education reforms in the BESP. Ostensibly an access focused insertion into the Constitution the target envisaged in Article 25A cannot be achieved, and sustained, without meaningful improvements in quality in tandem with efforts to increase education opportunities for all children in the province. In addition to the vision provided by Article 25A, the BESP basis its strategies on EFA/MDGs and other international commitments of Pakistan as well as the National Education Policy 2009. It subsumes the Balochistan Action Plan prepared in 2010 as an interim policy document.
The BESP deviates from previous efforts in its emphasis on quality as a factor of sustainability and equity. Without improvements in education quality the gaps in educational outcomes between the elite and the rest will continue to grow. Low expectations from public sector education cause drop outs and have lately induced a growth of low fee private schools. The latter have better functionality, on average, in terms of teacher availability and regularity but the classroom practices do not differ from the public schools. Educational outcomes of the children of these schools do not promise to be substantially different than the public schools unless the classroom teaching and learning process changes.
The Sector Plan recognizes the importance of the private sector given its increasing scale and includes it in the reform process under the leadership of the government. The responsibility for quality education for all children in Balochistan lies with the state and therefore the role of the provincial government cannot be obviated in education policy and planning.
The Sector Plan caters to the diversity in Balochistan and allows strategies to be developed and adapted as per local conditions. The province has a multiethnic and multilingual population, thinly spread over a vast piece of land with different levels of development which makes flexibility (or adaptability) critical to the reform implementation process.
The BESP hinges on the following broad based strategies: 1. Quality and relevance as fundamental elements of sustainable education reform. 2. Equity as a critical cross cutting factor. 3. Inclusion of communities and children left out of the education process. 4. Multiple approaches within the province based on: a. Level of functionality of the education system in various parts of the province. b. Development c. Demography 5. A process to diffuse the provincial plan into district plans. 6. A multi-tiered monitoring process to oversee implementation of the Sector Plan.
The BESP includes school education, higher education (excluding universities), and literacy and non-formal education. Issues of access, equity, quality and relevance and governance and management have been included across each sub-sector. School education occupies the maximum space due to its scale. We can remove this if nothing comes up.
The Plan has been developed as a 5 year document to be reviewed on an annual rolling basis. To avoid duplication the Plan borrows from other ongoing reforms undertaken by different development partners and the government. The development partners provided valuable professional support through directly developing sub sector plans or allowing the Plan to borrow from their work. Save the Children (UK) assisted in development of the ECE component, the pre-service section bases completely on the work of the USAID funded Pre-Step Project and the community schools concept has been adapted from the World Bank funded programme run by the Balochistan Education Foundation (BEF). The cooperation manifested in the plan preparation, under the leadership of the Government of Balochistan, promises effective coordination in implementation of the BESP.
The process of plan development has ensured ownership and comprehension of critical mass of offices of the strategies included. The set of offices, form all organisations, will provide the support into implementation and dissemination of the BESP.
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