Increasing girls’ enrollment and retention and improving the quality of education
Status: Completed Start Date: 2012 End Date: 2013 Geographic Coverage: District Ziarat and Jaffarabad in Baluchistan Focus Area: Education SDG Goal: 4 Education for All Implementing Partner: SPO and Other National NGOs Funding Partner: UNESCO
Despite serious efforts, access, equality and quality of education for vast majority of people are still farfetched goals to be achieved in Balochistan. The challenge of education management for provincial government has heightened after 18th amendment and devolution of education sector to provinces.
The vast geographical stretch, poor physical infrastructure, low population density and inadequate human and financial resources already continue to hold education delivery back in the province.
It has been concluded through years of research and experience, that community involvement in education improves the quality of education by increasing the sense of ownership, mobilizing resources, and building institutional capacity.
Parents’ role in management can be effective in ensuring that the schools are functioning with required facilities, children are enrolled and the teachers are doing their job. Parent Teacher School Management Committee (PTSMC) represents the structure of community participation in education management and development. It is the most effective way of institutionalizing the interaction between community and school.
SPO through this project designed and addressed the aforementioned challenges faced under thematic area of Education. The project envisioned to achieve overarching goal ‘To support UNESCO’s efforts in increasing girls’ enrolment and retention and improving the quality of education in primary schools by working in close consultation with local authorities’.
In two districts of Baluchistan province, SPO through two project components reached out to the local community.
Community mobilization and advocacy, which aims at increasing girls’ enrolment in the primary schools in marginalized communities through mobilization of local communities
Improvement in school physical and learning environment, which aims at improving retention and quality of girls’ primary education through activation of PTCs/ SMCs, provision of missing facilities like boundary wall, washrooms, drinking water, minor repairs (to a limited scale), and training of teachers in multi-grade teaching (MGT) and activity based learning (ABL).
The multi-strategy and approach to project implementation of SPO included action research, mobilization and advocacy of for promotion of girls’ education, and technical assistance for missing facilities.
