Evaluation Study of Increased Primary School Participation in Balochistan – a UNICEF Supported Project
The five year UNICEF project (Increasing Primary School Participation for Girls – IPSPG) aimed to enhance female education within four districts of Balochistan province such as Kalat, Pishin, Khudzar and Sibbi. The goal of the project was to break the cycle of low literacy at primary levels for girls by working to improve the school conditions and community activism. The program implemented from 1999 and 2003 aimed to promote community participation to take action and actively involve with the project. In September 2003, UNICEF requested a third part evaluation of the female literacy project from the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF).
The study draws on feedback related to enrollment tendencies, awareness, and attitudes about educating girls as a result of implementation of the UNICEF’s IPSPG project. Major goals of the project evaluation were to study a sample of schools (180) from the four districts in order to gauge the degree to which implementation was consistent with the plan and to assess the extent to which each of the major program components was implemented across sites. Feedback on perspectives of communities was also integrated for accessing the impact of collective actions. It is important to note that the quantitative and qualitative findings were equally important part of this evaluation. Without the qualitative evaluation important aspects of the project’s strengths and weaknesses would have been overlooked.
Evaluation demonstrated that the IPSPG project was effective in changing awareness levels and attitudes and was successful in mobilizing communities towards girls’ primary enrollment drives. Insufficient data was received with regards to school attendance. The analysis of the quantitative data obtained, showed small but significant statistical differences in the enrollments between 1999 and 2003. Even though it is evident from the BEMIS data that the enrollments did climb upwards across all the classes in all the four districts during the project duration, we cannot attribute the increase only to the project. In the curse of field visits it was observed that multiple interventions at different levels by various players (including donors and government alike) seemed to be in play in the education sector in Balochistan.
The results documented through this evaluation establish the efficacy of IPSPG as an earnest effort towards improving the education scenario for female population in a province that rates one of the lowest female education levels in the world. However steps need to be taken to broaden the scope of activities and improve the quality of communication through all levels of implementation including the donor agency, partner NGOs, government and the community in order to ensure that projects enjoy a higher level of beneficiary commitment which will intensify the benefits of future efforts. Also rather than being donor-driven and imposing conditions, projects ought to build on what the government and the people believe in and want to do. Thus suggestions from community to collaborate the education within a more acceptable and less taboo meddressas system can hit the nail on target in context of Balochistan.
Finally two shortcomings can be identified in the current evaluation. These were the inadequacy of data on school enrollments in Balochistan and the coinciding of evaluation timing with school vacations in three of the four districts that greatly hampered data acquisition.
