South Asia

The Balochistan Education Support Project for Pakistan received a moderately satisfactory outcome rating with high risk to development outcome. The Bank received a satisfactory... Show More + rating for their performance while the Borrower received a moderately satisfactory rating. Three restructurings took place throughout the course of this project. The first restructuring extended the project closing date 18 months to allow completion of construction activities under Component 1 of the Project. The second restructuring (i) Extended the project closing date another two years to allow for completion of construction of functional community schools under Component 1 and (ii) Reallocation of unallocated expenditure category to finance Community Implementation Partner contracts for extension period, to meet Balochistan Education Foundation (BEF) equipment and operational expenses during extension period, and to provide additional resources for school construction. The third restructuring reallocated funds originally allocated for the construction of a BEF office to cover expenses for office equipment for BEF staff (including monitoring equipment), a refresher teacher training course for community school teachers, and overdrawn Category 4 expenditure on support to construction of community schools. The following lessons were drawn from this project: (1) It is very important that the public sector commitment and ownership for the implementation and successful completion of any project are efficient. (2) The PECs when migrate or their children graduate, they have to quit the membership of the PEC. The PECs should be imparted with regular training every year or every second or third year. (3) In retaining children and teacher’s attendance, and increasing children enrollment and decreasing dropouts, community active participation is important. (4) Public sector institutions capacity to measure average annual increase in learning achievement in Language and Mathematics in Schools is weak. This needs to be built within institution, which deal with the education sector. (5) To retain teachers at Community Schools, their salaries need to be at the minimum equivalent to the minimum wage rate. (6) Capacity development support is crucial for ensuring timely and effective implementation of projects in provinces and regions that have limited public sector capacity, weak private sector presence and have deteriorating law and order situation. (7) Community School construction should be undertaken through professional engineering contractors under the supervision of PECs. (8) Early Childhood Education should be made a part of primary school teacher training. (9) Most importantly, the community school establishment design is far time and cost effective. The province is suffering from and alarming access issue. Education Department of Balochistan should adopt this design to ensure access throughout Balochistan. Show Less -