Financing
Financing the BESP
Scale Factors
Enrolments
Resource Impact
Unit Costs
Alternate Learning Pathways
Non Scale factors
Quality
Research Studies
Capacity Development Plans
Inclusive Education
Disaster Risk Reduction
Higher Education
Costing Gaps
The BESP costing shows requirements of additional funds over the plan period of 2013-14 to 2018-19. These have been staggered over each year as per priorities earmarked for the given period. All areas of intervention including quality and governance and management have been costed. Broadly these costs have been divided in terms of scale and non-scale costs. The scale costs are linked to student enrolment and will increase with expansion of the system. The non-scale costs, mostly pertaining to quality related interventions, do not depend on the number of students enrolled. The current exercise provides the outlays estimated on the basis of the current understanding of needs.
The BESP costing shows requirements of additional funds over the plan period of 2013-14 to 2018-19. These have been staggered over each year as per priorities earmarked for the given period. All areas of intervention including quality and governance and management have been costed. Broadly these costs have been divided in terms of scale and non-scale costs. The scale costs are linked to student enrolment and their total outlay will increase with expansion of the system. The non-scale costs, mostly pertaining to quality related interventions, do not depend on the number of students enrolled. The current exercise provides the outlays estimated on the basis of the current understanding of needs.
As the sector plan begins to get implemented more information will be retrieved and included in periodic revisions. These may lead to changes in costing estimates. How costs pan out for each strategy depend on the type of action expected from implementation of the latter. Strategies for BESP can be divided in four types:
1. Direct impact: These are related directly to on going work in the sector and augment either access or quality. Examples include construction of schools, teacher training etc.
2. Standards Review and Development: These strategies will not have an immediate visibility in the system and costing will be primarily around the human resource involved in the activity
3. Research Studies: These have been identified for areas where more information is needed before a strategy impacting education activity on ground, can be developed.
4. Capacity Development: Almost all sections of the sector plan entail some degree of capacity assessment and development. Costs for these have also be identified as separate activities which will have an impact on the sector only when implementation of the capacity development plans developed in pursuit of these strategies are implemented. The capacity develop plans will calculate their own implementation costs.
The last three strategy types will lead to further cost implications as each is expected to entail further strategies before they can have a more direct impact on service delivery. The current exercise cannot capture these costs. In any case the current costing has been made with serious data limitations. Hopefully the information base will improve during the course of implementation and the costs may need to be re-adjusted to revised targets. Already the sector plan calls for improvements in, and expansion of, the data collected by the Balochistan Education Management Information System (BEMIS).
12.1 Data Limitations:
Costing of the sector plan has been constrained by data limitations. These, as already explained in the Situation Analysis Report for the BESP as well as the earlier part of this document, result from limited information collected by BEMIS and absence of a population census since 1998. BEMIS does not cover schools outside the domain of the Education Department of Balochistan. This means data on private schools, madrassas and institutions run by public sector entities outside the domain of the Education Department, is not available with BEMIS. The only exception has been the data on schools run by the Balochistan Education Foundation (BEF) either as community schools or public private partnerships.
In the absence of a population census projections made by the National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS) have been used. The problem of estimating out of school children and drop outs for private schools required some estimates based on available information. Two options were considered for the estimation. First one was to use the Net Enrolment Ratios (NERs) from the Pakistan Social and Living Measurements Surveys (PSLM). In this method the NER would be estimated to show the number of children of out of school in a given cohort, with about ten percent added as the number of children who may be studying outside the relevant cohort.
The PSLM option could not be used as it provides NER for a given cohort only while cost estimates, ideally, require class wise enrolments and information on out of school children. Secondly combining PSLM with BEMIS data led to some anomalies. As PSLM is survey based while BEMIS covers, at least, all public schools, the latter was used. PSLM, therefore, does not factor into costing even though its indicators like NER, GER and gender parity have been used in the BESP as indicative of the state of education in the province.
Use of BEMIS data posed the problem of enrolment in private schools and madrassas. A guesstimate has been made based on opinions of key informants from both the public and private sectors interviewed during the course of the development of BESP. They have estimated that about 18 percent of students study in the private sector with the 20% in primary, 15% in middle and 10% in secondary. In case of madrassas the only information available pertains to 2009 when the Home Department of the Government of Balochistan collected data on madrassas. The proportion of madrassa students in 2009, in comparison to public school students, has been extended to later years to estimate the number of children enrolled in these institutions. As data collection by BEMIS improves these estimates will be replace with actual numbers. This may entail a revision of the cost estimates and even some of the values of targeted indicators.
12.2 Scale Factors
As already mentioned costs have been based on scale as well as non-scale factors. The next challenge posed by the data limitations was the choice of indicators to drive the costing. The following indicators have been used for the model.
Under the manual for education indicators prepared by UNESCO NIR has not been used beyond primary. The BESP has also used this for Middle and Secondary levels. This has been prompted by the strong interventions in the non formal education or the alternate learning path approach for out of school children. This means that children entering, middle or secondary, include not only those who pass out from a lower cohort but also participants of ALP programmes who have been mainstreamed.
The transition and dropout rate indicators pertain to public schools only. In case of private schools these have been assumed as close to 100 and zero respectively. BESP interventions do not directly impact the private schools at this stage. The impact on private schools will begin after standards have been revised and a regulatory regime put in place. At this point the impact of these interventions cannot be gauged. Secondly the relatively small PPP model with less than 2% of the total enrolment has also not been considered in the analysis. Only changes in public sector enrolment impact the costing.
These changes have been assumed not only on the basis of access related strategies which will increase enrolment but also qualitative improvements in the system that will reduce drop outs and improve transition rates. The increases in both these indicators as shown in the table above have been kept relatively low because of the slow impact of quality factors.
12.2.1 Enrolments
The Plan period envisages a total 56% increase in enrolments. The bulk of this increase is at the Early Childhood Education level at 82%. The 46% increase at primary contains the largest increase in terms of numbers.
The increases include faster improvements for girls, given the current gap. The table xx given below shows the shift in Gender Parity Index for enrolment of girls in public schools as break up for other schools is not available. There is a slow but upward movement.
Table 12.4 below captures the breakup of the source of enrolment increase. As strategies for increase include new schools and upgradation, additional enrolment in existing schools through improvements in quality and the effect of the Alternate Learning Path (ALP). The latter is not covered in the previous two tables. Additions in schools other than public schools have also been captured for the over all effect (also included in the Table 12.2).
Increase in children in schools outside the public sector have been assumed in the same proportion to public schools as the current ratios of public to non-public enrolments.
12.2.2 Resource Impact
Scale factors impact infrastructure, teachers and textbook requirements. All three have budgetary implications. In the long run increases in enrolment at secondary level should also impact the examinations costs. These have not been estimated for the current document because firstly the examination costs are borne by the students and secondly the increase in students at secondary level during the plan period is expected to be low.
The resources have been estimated on the basis of the following ratios:
The low student teacher ratio in the table above has been based on the low population density of the province wherein enough students may not be available in a number of settlements.
12.2.3 Unit Costs
For infrastructure the rates used by the Communications and Works Department of the Government of Balochistan have been used. The Department is responsible for school construction in the province. Other unit costs used are:
i. Teachers salaries ii. Teacher training iii. Other salariesiv. Textbooks
While for salaries the government rates have been used for textbooks the rates have been increased for the current ones used by the Balochistan Textbook Board. The Board uses Rupees 250 per set of books per level. This cannot be realistic if quality of books have to be improved. The rates for middle and secondary have been calculated at Rs. 250 and 305 respectively.
Inflation has been calculated on an annual ten percent per annum based on trend of revision of government’s rates in the past.
Infrastructure requirements have been estimated not only on the basis of simple enrolment increases but also the need to cover settlements without any schools. For such settlements a primary school on the community school model with two rooms has been envisaged. A number of primary and high schools will also be upgraded. For each middle and high school costs of the following infrastructure has been calculated.
Middle School (Infrastructure)
1. 1 headmaster/mistress office 2. 5 additional rooms 3. Science room 4. 2 toilets 5. Boundary wall
High School Infrastructure
1. 1 headmaster/mistress office 2. 4 additional rooms 3. Science lab 4. IT lab 5. Library 6. 1 staff room 7. Multipurpose hall 8. 2 toilets 9. Boundary wall 10. 1 store
Alternate Learning Pathways
12.2.4: Strategies for Alternate Learning Pathways primarily focus on policy development and awareness. There is however a component of expansion or setting up also within the control of the Directorate of Education. Costs for these have been calculated as per table below.
12.3 Non Scale factors
Non scale factors relate to interventions that are not directly linked to enrolment. These include standards development, capacity assessments and capacity development plans and research studies. Implementation of some of these interventions, once completed, may be linked to scale related costs which can be included in subsequent revisions of the BESP.
The non-scale factors have primarily been costed in terms of human resource required as many of these interventions required hiring of specialists. Some of the activities require have no or minimal financial implications. These are decisions that can be taken in routine government activity like issuance of notifications for approval of standards or nomination of an organisation for a specific action. These have not been assigned any costs in the BESP. Some of the key costs in case of non-scale are those related to quality and capacity development.
12.3.1 Quality Related
A cross cutting strategy for all quality related inputs has been development of standards. Costs have been calculated on the basis of human resource and processes employed. As can be seen most of these are planned to be completed by the end of year 2. Once standards are developed their implementation may entail a separate costing exercise which will merge with the sector plan as it is reviewed on an ongoing basis.
Curriculum dissemination as part of the Curriculum Implementation Framework has been identified as a key strategy to move towards better understanding of the curriculum. The dissemination exercise includes teachers, education managers, political leaders and community. As it takes time to reach all stakeholders a four year plan has been included hence costs for each of the first four years.
12.3.2 Research Studies
Despite an exhaustive ‘Situation Analysis’ for the sector plan all information could not be obtained (as will always be the case). Specific research studies in different areas have been recommended for the sector plan. There costs for each year are given in Table 12.9.
12.3.3 Capacity Development Plans
As the education sector delivery process begins to shift in pursuit of the strategies of BESP capacity review will become inevitable. An almost across the board capacity development process has been included in the sector plan, with costing, as shown below. As already explained earlier these costs only cover the capacity assessment and plan development processes. Cost of implementation will be calculated in the capacity development plans themselves. This will increase the outlay for the sector plan.
12.3.4 Inclusive Education
Inclusive education has also been taken up as a cross cutting theme in BESP. Initially teacher training and awareness strategies have been envisaged as the main issue is a lack of awareness and understanding of the concept. Table 12.11 below calculates the cost of developing material for the purpose.
12.3.5 Disaster Risk Reduction
Under disaster risk reduction the main cost at this point is in assessment of the situation and plan preparation which will be completed in year 1 of the BESP. Other costs may arise from the plan prepared for DRR which will add to subsequent revisions of the plan.
12.3.6 Higher Education
Higher Education strategies primarily focus on conversion of the 2 year undergraduate into a 4 year programme as per international norms and the requirements of the Higher Education Commission (HEC). Only two colleges have been targeted for the purpose during the plan period. Table 12.13 details the costs involved.
12.4 Costing Gaps
Table 12.14 shows the costing gap. Row 1 shows the normal budgetary increase as calculated from past trends. The second row shows the impact of the sector plan requirements. Annual budgetary increase rises from the trend value of 10% to 17% in the first year followed by 36% and 45% for subsequent years.
The gap will have to be met with increased government commitments to the sector and also more donor support. The stakeholders’ engagement strategy of BESP considers this aspect. Already the government has shown serious commitment to the education sector and more increases are expected.
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