14 how democratic transition matters for education, and how to tell if this transition is under way by mosharraf zaidi

1. Abstract
emostrecentthinkingaboutnutritionindicatesthata
child's well being begins to be de ned from about the
third month of her or his mother's pregnancy. What the
mother eats,watches,breathes,hears,and experiences for
the next six months are the rst inputs to a child's
eventual human capacities—physical, intellectual and
otherwise. Pakistan currently has 22.6 million children
outof schoolbetweentheagesof veandsixteen.Over12
million of them are girls. ese girls represent the fourth
generation of Pakistani mothers.And they are the fourth
consecutive generation in which large proportion is
illiterate. e prospects for this generation and their
progeny are dim, unless Pakistan sets out on a path of
dramatic reforms to how it treats, talks about, nances
and evaluates the state of education. Democracy in
Pakistan is still weak, and expectations of Pakistani
institution must be tempered. However, the use of the
term transition should also be conditional. We can only
refer to Pakistan as being a country experiencing a
democratic transition if it exhibits the signs of actually
being in transition. is paper will assess and identify
what a set of positive signs with regards to democratic
transition look like—from the lens of reform in
education. It will then identify how those signs may be
catalyzed, and what it will take to sustain them so that
they represent the beginnings of a larger social, economic
andpoliticaltransformationinPakistan.
Pakistan is bracing for its second consecutive transfer
of power through constitutionally uncontroversial
means later this year, as one elected government is set
to make way for another. e overwhelming likelihood
of a second successive constitutional transfer of power
due in a few months means that it is correctly being
hailed as a momentous juncture in the country's
history, underlining progress towards rede ning
structural norms, and the improving ability of the
state's democratic institutions to survive a signi cant
array of challenges. However, far from putting the
debate about the best way forward for Pakistan to rest,
the upcoming democratic transition, much like the last
one, is stimulating a fascinating contest for political
power and control over Pakistan's governance. e
civil-military disequilibrium, seen by many as the
principal and de ning cleavage in Pakistan's identity as
a nation-state not only continues to fester, but in many
ways has emerged as an even stronger factor as the
democratic transition shifts into the third phase,
beyond merely the consolidation of democratic
processes like elections, transfers of power and
legislation, to the actual competition for authority over
decision-making in contested realms like national
security and foreign policy. For many democrats in
Pakistan therefore, there has never been greater
urgency to demonstrate not just the normative or
constitutional supremacy of democracy, but also the
functionalbene tsofthisdemocracy.
Democracy in Pakistan is still weak, and expectations
of Pakistani institutions to transform and deliver on
their promise need to be tempered. But the use of the
term transition should also be conditional. We can
only refer to Pakistan as being a country experiencing a
democratic transition if it exhibits the signs of actually
being in transition. is transition can be manifest in a
number of ways, but one critical means of assessment is
the manner in which Pakistanis prepare their children
for the future. Pakistan is among a unique set of
countries that is in the start of a demographic phase
during which its working population will constantly
increase, in relation to those that are not in working
HOW DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION MATTERS FOR EDUCATION, AND
HOW TO TELL IF THIS TRANSITION IS UNDER WAY
MOSHARRAF ZAIDI
Pakistan Mapping the Policy Agenda 2018-2023
175

2. age. e extent to which young people in Pakistan will
be educated, and the quality of the education these
young people receive will be critical to the country's
future, and since the demographic transition happens
to be timed exactly alongside the country's3
democratic transition, the intimacy of their interplay,
both realandperceived,isinevitable.
Whatisthedemographicdividend?
Pakistan is home to one of the world's youngest
populations. Twenty nice percent of Pakistan's
population is between the ages of 15 and 29 years, and
1
64 percent is below the age of 30 years. is “youth
bulge” has not gone unnoticed. Pakistani advertisers
and Pakistani politicians have caught on, and the
dominant drivers in both the high-consumption urban
economy and the overall political discourse re ect a
robust consciousness that the biggest population
segment in the country is young people. e core of
advertising and marketing in Pakistan focuses on this
2
youth population . e 2013 general election was
hailed as Pakistan's “youth” election. e demographic
estimates suggest that all elections in Pakistan will
continue to be “youth” elections now until about the
middle of this century, with the “youth bulge”
3
expectedto easearound2045 .
As always, policy makers lag behind, but eventually
catch on. is is particularly problematic in the
Pakistani context, where a signi cant portion of the
public policy discourse is informed by narratives
shaped by multilateral and bilateral donors, and
applied locally through a policy elite incentivized to
address the issues important to those donors rather
than to the speci c contexts and cultures in which they
operate. e premium associated with the term
demographicdividendisa perfectcasein point.
What is the demographic dividend? eoretically,
demographic dividend is the difference between the
rate of growth of working age population and total
population. When the difference is in favour of
working age population, it is considered to be a
window of opportunity offered by country's
demography to make use of for economic growth
4
(Mason 2005) . e technical de nition of the
demographic dividend is the expected economic gains
created by a transformation in the age structure of the
population, as an increase in the working age
population combines with a decline in the dependent
agepopulation(Nayab2006).
e demographic transition Pakistan is experiencing
began in the 1990s and peaked in the early 2000s.
Nayab (2006) calculates that it will end in 2045. e
graph itself represents the differential between the
working population of “youth” and the non working
population. e basis for calling it a dividend is that
there are more people in the economy that are earning
incomes, and able to take care of others, than there are
people, not earning incomes, that require to be taken
careof.
e problem is that “many policymakers mistakenly
think that a demographic dividend results
automatically from a large population of young people
relative to the population of working-age adults and
without the needed population, social, and economic
policies.isisnotthecase”.5
ere is an established discourse on the promotion of
Pakistan's “demographic dividend”, a term used both
by the ever-green optimists Pakistan regularly relies on
1
Pakistan National Human Development Report, United Nations
Development Program
2
Hyder, S. “e elixir that is the youth”, Aurora Magazine,
Dawn Group, Karachi July-August 2013
3
Nayab, Durr e, “Demographic Dividend or Demographic reat in
Pakistan”, Pakistan Institute for Development Economics, Islamabad,
2006
4
Nayab, Durr e, “Demographic Dividend or Demographic reat in
Pakistan”, Pakistan Institute for Development Economics, Islamabad,
2006
5
Gribble, James and Bremner, Jason, “Achieving a Demographic
Dividend” Volume 67, Number2, Population Reference Bureau, USA,
December 2012
176
How Democratic Transition Matters for Education, and How to Tell if is Transition is Under Way

3. to run their nance ministries, and the international
nancial institutions on whom those optimists rely on
for timely bailouts for their inter-generationally
atrocious scal policies.
At the annual meeting of bilateral and multilateral
donors to Pakistan, called the “Pakistan Development
Forum” 2007, the government (in partnership with
the World Bank) billed the event as, “e
Demographic Dividend: Unleashing the Human
Potential”. e adviser to the Prime Minister for
Finance at the time, Mr. Salman Shah, mistakenly, but
tellingly referred to the event in his keynote speech as,
“Encashing e Demographic Dividend - Unleashing
6
the Human Potential” . e slip in understandable.
Pakistani decision-makers are not incentivized to think
through the implications of the claims they make to
their benefactor donors, nor are they held to account
by voters (given the dominance of unelected
technocrats and bureaucrats, in key decision-making
positions). ey are incentivized to increase scal space
for their direct bosses. Mr. Shah's slip of the tongue is a
perfect narrative for Pakistan's so-called “demographic
dividend”.
A genuine, sincere and effective approach to realizing
the economic, social and political potential of the
demographic transition in population taking place in
Pakistan that could yield a “demographic dividend”
would need to have, at its very heart, a clear
commitment to and implementation of, education
policies that put children in school, keep them there
throughout their school-age, and ensure that they are
constantly learning. On the strength of the existing
evidence, such policies did not exist in 2007, and they
donotexisttoday.
WhereisPakistanandwhatdirectionisitheadedin?
Pakistan's Millennium Development Goals'
performance is a good starting point to assess the
impact of decades of negligence toward educating
Pakistan's children. e net enrollment rate at primary
level reported in the Pakistan Social and Living
Measurement Survey 2014-2015 is 57%. According to
Economic Survey of Pakistan 2017-18, the total
literacy rate for Pakistan's population above the age of
10 years is 58%. e adage, “you get what you pay for”
may seldom be as perfectly illustrated as this. If you
only put 57% of your children in school at the primary
level, it is reasonable to expect that there will around
57% children that will have a chance to qualify as
“literate” when they are ten years or older. In fact, the
similarity of the two numbers is remarkable, and
unlikely to sustain longer term, given that roughly30%
of those enrolled in primary school, do not complete
primary school, instead dropping out (World Bank
7
2013) .
Pakistan is headed in a direction that will produce
multiple generations of illiterate, unlettered and
unful lled citizens, incapable of communicating
effectively, incapable of the numeracy required in the
21st century, and incapable of competing with an
increasingly sophisticated global marketplace. Worst
of all, these citizens will be robbed of the opportunity
to ful lltheir fullhuman potential.
Frequent allusions to the democratic transition and the
demographic dividend therefore are out of synch with
the reality state and society are invested in, and actively
working toward. ere is little to no indication that
major, transformational change is on the cards, despite
asigni cantchangeinsomeaspectsofeducation.
Without an urgent appraisal and even more urgent
effort to address the education crisis in Pakistan, the
democratic transition is at risk of joining the
“demographic dividend” in the category of unthinking
narratives designed by disconnected policymakers
seeking only to comfort people about the future.
Under the current circumstances, and given the
current trajectory, Pakistani children do not have a
bright future. e promise of a democratic transition
however is to prevent the country's continuation on
thecurrenttrajectory.
6
Salman Shah's speech at the 2007 Pakistan Development Forum,
archived at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPAKISTAN/
Resources/MrSalmanShahcopy
7
World Bank Data Set: accessed from http://data.worldbank.org/
indicator/SE.PRM.CMPT.ZS
Pakistan Mapping the Policy Agenda 2018-2023
177

4. What are the circumstances under which the promise
of ademocratictransition maybeful lled?
Locating“democratictransitions”
We must rst locate the idea of democracy or
democratic transition and how these relate to
education.
e oldest argument goes back as far as Aristotle,
whose ideas about the quality of governance or
democracy as being intricately linked to quality of life,
and particularly levels of education of the populace
were brought back into academic circles through the
8
seminalpaper bySeymour Lipset(Lipset1959) .
e data for over a hundred countries, across a
timeframe of 35 years (1960 to 1995) con rms that
better social indicators predict more democracy, “as
measured by a subjective indicator of electoral rights.
e propensity for democracy rises with per capita
GDP, primary schooling, and a smaller gap between
9
maleandfemaleprimary attainment”(Barro 1999) .
e direction of the relationship is not narrow and
one-sided, either. “A shift to democracy leads to
increases in health and education spending, which
reaches a larger segment of the population” (Kaufman
10
and Segura-Ubiergo 2001) . A signi cant body of
literature exists on the impact of democratization on
spending and outcomes in primary education in Latin
America, including Kaufman and Segura-Ubiergo
(2001), Ames (1987) and especially Brown and
Hunter(1999).
Similarly, there is evidence than in Africa, more
democracy has produced better education outcomes.
In particular, a study of 44 countries across the
timeframe of 1980 to 1996 shows clear evidence that
the democratically elected African governments that
came about as a result of democracy movements in the
continent African democracy movements in the 1990s
helped move the average for primary education, across
the entire continent, in part by spending more on
primary education, than their non democratic
11
predecessorsdid(Stasavage2005).
ere is also a range of academic work on the capacity
for resisting dictatorship and engendering democracy
in transition societies where democracy is still weak
(Glaeser et al 2007). Education increases support for
democracy, partly because democracy relies on people
with high participation bene ts for its support (and
participation rates increase directly with education
attainment levels). More “educated nations are more
likely both to participate in and preserve their
democracies as well as to protect and inoculate them
12
fromcoups” .
In short, there is a substantial body of work that
correlates education and democracy, as well as
education and democratic transitions. Even critics of
the approach that privileges democracy as an
instrument for increased growth, and improved
development outcomes, nd evidence that at least in
terms of primary education, democracies do better
13
(Ross 2006) . e correlations are not necessarily
indicative of causation, but the dual track of the
correlations is important to consider. More educated
countries tend to be more democratic, and more
democratic countries tend to invest in the education of
their people. If the data and evidence from other
studies holds true, the only possible future direction
for a country like Pakistan, in which a weak democracy
is getting stronger and more resistant to undemocratic
forces, is for it to increase its investments in education.
Concurrently, the state of the country, and in
particular the demographic transition in which
Pakistan nds itself, would compel any rational actors
within the decision-making to domain to make those
investments in education urgently. e outcomes of
Pakistan’s education policies do not suggest, as
described above, that this urgency is exists. But how
would we know if it was beginning to manifest itself?
What would what a set of positive signs with regards to
8
Lipset, S. M., “Some social requisites for democracy: Economic development
and political legitimacy”. American Political Science Review, 53, 69–105, 1959
9
Barro, Robert J, “Determinants of democracy”. Journal of Political Economy
107(S6): 158-183, 1999
10
Kaufman, R. R. & Segura-Ubiergo, A., “Globalization, Domestic Politics,
and Social Spending in Latin America: A Time-Series Cross-Section Analysis,
1973-97”. World Politics 53(4), 553-587. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
11
Stasavage, David, “Democracy and Education Spending in Africa”,
American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2005, Pp. 343–358
12
Glaeser E, Ponzetto, GAM & Shleifer, A, “Why does democracy need education?”
Journal of Economic Growth, (2007) 12:77–99 DOI 10.1007/s10887-007-9015-1
13
Ross, M., “Is Democracy Good for the Poor?” Forthcoming, American Journal
of Political Science, UCLA Department of Political Science, April 2006
178
How Democratic Transition Matters for Education, and How to Tell if is Transition is Under Way

5. democratic transition look like – from the lens of
reform in education, i.e. how can we tell whether
education hasbecomeapriorityinPakistan?
Bellweathersineducation
e system in Pakistan has already gured out the rst
“layer” of what needs doing in education. ere are
threesignsthatithasdoneso.
First, political leaders in Pakistan have made education
a constitutional right, with an explicit invocation to
the cost of education as being “free”. Article 25-A was
included in the 18th amendment in 2010 as part of a
dramatic reform that is widely seen as the most
signi cant (and most democratic) structural reforms of
Pakistan’s democracy since the early 1970s. is has
meant that administrative and nancial authority over
education as a subject has been transferred to
provinces. Notwithstanding, delays in structural
recon guration ushered in through the 18th
amendment, all provincial governments have made
signi cant strides in setting the direction of priorities
foreducation.
e most signi cant marker of governments’
commitment towards the education sector has been
the consistent year on year improvement in provincial
educationbudgetsoverthelast veyears.
Pakistan Mapping the Policy Agenda 2018-2023
179

6. Second, the state in Pakistan has now committed to
universal primary education in letter and in spirit.
Beyond its international covenants and commitments
that indicate this, there is growing evidence, based on
the annual school season, that for several years now,
provincial and the federal governments undertake
expansive enrolment drives to increase enrolment
rates, focusing exclusively on primary education. is
commitment has yet to achieve its goal, with over ve
million children between ve and nine that are still out
14
of school , but progress on this is evident from both
the data over the years, and the quality of effort
invested in this, year on year. e year on year trend of
out of school population has shown considerable
decline over a four year period for which data is
available. Despite positive changes for the better over
the last few years, Pakistan Education Statistics 2015-
16 indicates there still are over 22.6 million children of
school going age that are not going to school across the
country.
ird, society at large is responding to the crisis,
although this response needs to be framed in an
absolute picture of education (which is nothing short
of dismal), rather than a relative picture (in which it
seems to indicate responsiveness). e Alif Ailaan
campaign has tracked the coverage of education in
eight major newspapers since February 2013. e
change inthevolumeof coveragehasbeendistinct:
14
Pakistan Education Statistics 2016-17
180
How Democratic Transition Matters for Education, and How to Tell if is Transition is Under Way

7. e various spikes in the discourse have been informed
by various stimuli, and the signi cant troughs are
explained by a range of non-education related stories
that essentially “crowd-out” education from the
discourse altogether. But the overarching trend in the
coverageofeducation,hasbeen demonstrably positive.
Attribution of why this has taken place is problematic,
and certainly, Alif Ailaan would be among the rst to
claim credit. A more robust explanation is that
campaigns like Alif Ailaan, and events like the UN
session that featured Malala Yusufzai, as well as a
fundamental shift in political attitudes, partly
informed by demographics and partly by the
urbanization of the Pakistani electorate have all
converged to produce a higher propensity for reporting
storiesthatrelatetoeducation in Pakistan.
e political discourse has decidedly shifted more
visibly toward articulating commitments to education,
and some of the unlikeliest candidates tend to be the
most vocal and vociferous. In their 2013 election
manifestos, every single national political party made a
range of important promises to improve education,
and in particular to increase spending on education.
Every party committed to spending a minimum of 4%
of the GDP on education, with most committing to
4% to 5%. e Jamiat e Ulema e Islam (Fazlur
Rehman group) however, a party commonly seen as
having a regressive and/or retrograde social policy
orientation, 161 committed to spending 15% of GDP
annually on education, an almost eight-fold increase
on the current levels, which would amount to an actual
increase of atleast$25billion dollarsannually.
ese changes represent a quantum of difference that
we may choose to take comfort from. However any
congratulatory messages that are inspired by these
indicators would be desperately premature. ere are a
range of second-order indicators that would represent
a real shift, and following those, a third, and fourth
order of indicators. e fundamental point here is that
we cannot escape the need for a sustained scal,
administrative and creative effort to x the state of
educationinPakistan.
In the short run, we may be able to identify progress by
examiningfour speci caspectsoftheeducation sector.
First, the focus on enrolment needs to be integrated
with a conversation about retention. In practical terms,
this would not be sufficiently demonstrated by op-eds
Pakistan Mapping the Policy Agenda 2018-2023
181

8. or newspaper stories about dropouts (though these
would help). is enriching of the spectrum of
universal primary education would be sufficiently
demonstrated only by the inclusion of dropout
statistics in the indicators used by executives within the
administrative structure of education delivery, starting
from Chief Ministers down through the district
officers for education. Such a conversation would
entailamappingofeducational channelsavailable for
students once they graduate from primary level
schools. Presently, the thrust of education
interventions is geared towards meeting the needs at
primary level. e disparity in focus is best captured by
the variance in supply meant to cater the demand at
primary and beyond primary levels - a fundamental
proxy for which is the number of schools. On average,
for every ve schools in Pakistan, only one school is
middle or high school. It shows that there exists a vast
bias against children continuing school beyond the
primary level. is bias is even more deep rooted and
starkwhen itcomestogirls.
Second, enrolment and the ip-side of dropouts, must
be seen not only from the perspective of the overall
data, but speci cally in terms of what happens to the
data for girls. e gender gap in enrolment begins
before birth, but its rst manifestation on the national
data “grid” is in the shape of the dramatic difference in
out of school populations in Pakistan. Of the 22.6
million out of school children in Pakistan, no fewer
than 12 million are girls. Explanations that privilege
Pakistan’s “culture” or “tradition” or “values” do not
stand, outside of a small sliver of Pakistan’s 145 districts
in which there are physical limitations to female
participation in schooling and/or labor. Only 19% of
out-of-school girls can be attributed to parental
restrictions—and even for those 19%, anecdotal
evidence suggests that the restrictions are rooted in
concerns about safety and physical security. Parents
wantingsafeenvironmentsfor their daughters,isnota
unique cultural construct for Pakistanis, but a
universal phenomenon. e failure to educate
Pakistani girls needs to be located precisely where it
belongs: at the feet of the government system. is is a
supply-side failure, and constant allusions to “culture”
smacks both of orientalism and a desire to seek excuses
for failed state delivery mechanisms. Interventions to
increase the safety and comfort of girls and their
mothers within schools, en route to schools and up the
chain of schools (from primary, to middle, to high, to
higher secondary) would represent a clear signal that
the evolution from the simplistic enrolment construct
is beginning to make way for a more nuanced and
sophisticated understanding of the lack of enrolment.
e proportion of girls enrolled in schools at primary,
middle and high levels indicates the breadth of
challengeathand.
182
How Democratic Transition Matters for Education, and How to Tell if is Transition is Under Way

9. ird, government data needs to re ect outcomes as
much as it does inputs. In simple terms, government
must collect and report on the quality of education
being provided in the country. Learning outcome
measurements in Pakistan are not incorporated within
the annual census data collected and published every
year by the government, and hence they cannot be
linked to speci c schools. Instead, quality metrics are
measured through provincial standardized tests results
that are published on a yearly basis in Sindh and
Punjab. At the federal level National Education
Assessment System published the ndings of National
Achievement Test that indicate the quality of learning
levels among students from across the country. e
desired focus on the quality of education being
provided isn’t simply about the outcomes, but rather is
instrumental in assessing what teachers are doing the
classroom and what administrators are doing to
support them. If it seems ridiculous that there is no
collection of data about education quality
incorporated in the national education census every
year, its because it is. Until this data does not begin to
be collected and aligned with other indicators captured
intheyearlycensus,progresswill remainlimited.is
is not going to be easy or quick. e learning levels as
indicated by test scores published by NEAS paint a
picture that leaves much to be desired. e challenge of
quality cannot be tackled effectively unless indicators
of quality are not embedded into the education data
regime, where test scores are synchronized with input
indicatorsatthe school level.
Pakistan Mapping the Policy Agenda 2018-2023
183

10. Finally, there needs to be an indication that
government is interested in enforcing its writ, and
protecting the future of Pakistani children. ere
would be no better indicator of this than a program
that rewards good government and private schools and
invests in punitive actions against low quality
government and private schools, as well as to assess
teacher quality on a regular basis. ere is an important
caveat to this condition. It cannot be ful lled in the
absence of official data on quality, and an overarching
improvement in the perception of government
capacity and ownership in the education sector. e
state of government officials in the education sector
today, and the perceptions of corruption and
patronage that currently exist would render a sudden
emergence of decerti cation exercises completely
counterproductive. So if this condition is to be met, it
must be met as a product of at least meeting the other
three.
Finally, while thesemeasure or indicators would signify
a positive trajectory, we also need to be keenly on the
look out for signs of inertia and a lack of progress. It
will not merely be the lack of the above indicators that
demonstrate a lack of progress. How would we know
progressisnothappening?
We would know if two things that are currently
embedded within the discourse and the system
continue to go unchallenged. ese problems may not
entirely be resolved in the short and medium term, but
if a robust, mainstream challenge to them does not
emerge in the short run, we will know that the children
of Pakistan are not likely to be rescued from the
pressure cookerandgrinderof the
demographic and democratic transitions their
country’s economists, politicians and talking heads
15
havebeen celebratingsincetheturn of thecentury .
e rst problem that needs to be challenged in the
Pakistani discourse, including the mainstream political
parties, is the embedded narrative of “the private
sector” as the saviour of Pakistan’s children. e reason
for this is quite simple. e biggest problem of
enrolment, retention and quality – the education crisis
triple threat in Pakistan – exists in the lowest economic
quintileinthecountry.
Moreover, there is no example in human history, and
certainly none since the Westphalian state emerged, of
the universalization of education, and the mass
capacitation of human capital that has been
undertaken by the narrowly interested private sector.
In the most benign cases, appeals to the private sector
are a function of desperation by government officials
and donors to the starkness and urgency of the
Pakistani education crisis. In the worst case scenarios,
they are the products of ideological conviction. Either
way, the continued and uncontested dominance of the
15
e writer has been a card-carrying member of this group of optimists,
and is likely to continue investing in the hope for a change in how
Pakistan thinks about and treats its children.
184
How Democratic Transition Matters for Education, and How to Tell if is Transition is Under Way

11. idea that Pakistan simply needs to continue allowing
the private sector to grow unfettered, and continue to
allow the public sector schools to atrophy and corrode
is bad for Pakistani children, especially those who
belongto thelowestincomequintilein thecountry.
e second problem that needs to be challenged is the
overwhelming lack of political ownership in the
education reform discourse, and the resulting
dominance of multilateral and bilateral donors within
the education reform discourse in Pakistan. is is not
an uncontroversial position to take for anyone that is
personally invested in donor-funded education sector
16
activities. What is important is how this challenge is
framedandwhatismotivatingit.
First, it is important to identify how this challenge
should not be framed. ere is an existing narrative
that challenges donors’ involvement in education that
is largely rooted in an insecure national security
narrative that derives from soft xenophobia. is may
be legitimate in some speci c instances (such as the
discourse surrounding Dr. Shakil Afridi and his fake
vaccination campaign’s impact on the polio discourse
in Pakistan). However it is wildly inaccurate in most
instances, and serves to undermine the real reasons for
seeking a lessening of donor involvement in service-
delivery issues like healthcare, water and sanitation and
education.
e real cause for seeking a reduction and gradual
termination of donor nancing and involvement in
issues like education reform is that continued
engagement has a dual negative impact on the organic
discourse for reform. In the rst instance, it reduces the
pressure on elected leaders and government officials to
reform themselves, knowing that they can depend on
donors for inputs and support. In the second, it
subsidizes the cost to Pakistani leaders of continuing to
make decisions, and allocate effort and resources as
they have in the past. In short, donors may be
unwittingly incentivizing the very behaviour they are
tryingtoalter.
Ultimately, the absence of the emergence of a robust
indigenous discourse for education reform, and the
failureofPakistanileadersand officialsto nancesuch
reforms of their own accord, is an indicator of the
failure to stimulate real and abiding political
ownership of the education reform agenda. Only a
dramatic improvement in the indigenous political
ownership of the education reform agenda in Pakistan
will cause a reduction of donor participation in the
discussion about education in Pakistan. A reduced role
for donors in education that comes about as a function
of dramatic improvements in the political ownership
of education reform would indicate a transformational
positive improvement in the education discourse, and
abrighterfuture forPakistanichildren.
Conclusion
ere are four facts that form the basis of the assertions
inthispaper.
First, Pakistan is a country of young people, and
therefore education is a demographically relevant issue
forustoexplore.
Second, that education in Pakistan is in a state of crisis,
and portends disastrous future social and political
outcomes.
ird, that there is substantial evidence that more
democracy is better for educational outcomes,
particularly primary education, and that more
educationstrengthensdemocracies.
Finally, fourth, that the mere evidence of the
correlations between democracy and education, or
signs of the awareness of the problem are not enough to
predictthatPakistan will addresstheeducation crisis.
On the basis of these facts, we’ve assembled a set of four
conditions or indicators that would demonstrate
second-order progress in the education discourse, and
16
e writer is the campaign director for Alif Ailaan, an education
campaign funded by DFID, the UK Government Department for
International Development.
Pakistan Mapping the Policy Agenda 2018-2023
185

12. two indicators whose continued dominance will tell us
that progress is not being made. ese factors are not
exhaustiveandareopento a widearrayof challenges.
ose in government in Pakistan would be best served
by focusing on the factors that can immediately be
addressed–especially the rstthreepositiveindicators,
i.e. a focus on dropouts and retention, a focus on girls
and a focus on collecting and reporting data on the
quality ofeducation.
ose in the not for pro t and private sectors would be
best served by focusing on the last positive indicator –
the demonstration of government intent to regulate
and invest in managing the quality of schools and
teachers. Such a focus in inevitable, but how and when
itcomesaboutisimportant.
ose in the international community, particularly
multilateral and bilateral donors should focus on the
two indicators of a lack of progress (or negative
indicators). e conventional wisdom of the bene ts
of private sector participation in service delivery, when
applied to Pakistan as it currently is con gured,
undermines many of the core aspirations of neoliberal
agenda that forms the basis of many donor
interventions. More importantly, it leaves the poorest
and most vulnerable, at the mercy of failed markets
and almost failed governments. is is a direct
contradiction of the aims and objectives of most
donors and their benevolent programs in Pakistan.
Finally, the absence of the emergence of a robust
discourse for education reform, and the failure of
governments to nance such reforms of their own
accord, is an indicator of the failure to stimulate real
and abiding political ownership of the education
reform agenda. Only a dramatic improvement in the
indigenous political ownership of the education
reform agenda in Pakistan will cause a reduction of
donor participation in the discussion about education
in Pakistan. at would be a brighter day for Pakistan
and itchildren.
Adapted from “Democratic Transition in Pakistan: What will happen to the children of this democracy?”
paper presented at the Oxford University International Conference, “Pakistan: Opportunity in Crisis” May 10-11, 2014
186
How Democratic Transition Matters for Education, and How to Tell if is Transition is Under Way