US-Pakistan: Partnership-building and Pilot Research for an Evaluation on Strengthening Private Schools for the Rural Poor in Pakistan

1201603 KhwajaDescription：该项目由哈佛大学哈佛肯尼迪学院Asim Khwaja博士主持，旨在促进与巴基斯坦科学家在评估和加强巴基斯坦农村贫困私立学校方面的合作。外国合作者是巴基斯坦经济研究中心(CERP)的研究主任阿里·阿斯贾德·纳克维(Ali Asjad Naqvi)。为农村穷人服务的低成本、营利性私立学校的出现改变了巴基斯坦和全球低收入国家的教育部门。小型农村私立学校是巴基斯坦中小型企业(SME)部门增长最快的部分之一。最近的研究表明，这些学校的力量在于：(1)为农村贫困人口服务；(2)雇用、教育和赋予妇女权力；(3)在数学、乌尔都语、英语学习成果方面优于公立学校；(4)在学生中培养更高水平的公民价值观。尽管私立学校显示出强大的实力，但这一领域持续增长的制约因素正在显现。PI计划开展一系列活动，为对向新兴经济体私立学校提供融资和教育支持的新模式进行严格的实证评估奠定基础。该项目建立在国家科学基金会(SES 0962504：了解来自巴基斯坦的教育市场实验和观察证据？)支持下的PI现有工作的基础上。并扩展到低成本私立学校的特定领域。研究结果显示，尽管巴基斯坦私立学校的成本相对较低，但它们的表现优于公立学校，但它们面临着持续增长和质量提高的制约。由于缺乏关于如何最好地支持这一充满活力的部门的证据，PI将开展所需的初步工作，以设计、实施和评估通过提供财政、教育和运营支持来支持私立教育企业家的模式。这需要与关键的国际利益攸关方接触，并利用更多的数据来源来设计一套干预措施和相关的项目评估方法，以支持该部门并确定这些干预措施的实施伙伴。纳克维博士将在发展伙伴关系、设计项目活动和为研究评估提供当地意见方面发挥关键作用。智力优势：认识到低成本私立学校的迅速崛起和该部门面临的新出现的限制，私人投资机构的目标是填补现有知识的空白：如何与私立教育部门对接、支持并使其取得成功。他们计划解决一些现有文献仍未回答的问题。私立学校的哪些需求是最大的，或者哪些约束是有约束力的？就盈利能力和社会成果而言，低成本私立教育部门的投资回报是什么？哪种财务机制(赠款、贷款或股权投资)将产生最大的投资回报和改善社会结果？最后，要进一步加强这一充满活力的部门，资金和获得教育支持的最佳组合是什么？更广泛的影响：这项研究产生的经验证据有可能对学术界作出独特的贡献，并在非政府组织和私营部门的政策制定者和从业人员中产生重大反应。如果该模式被证明是可持续的，并产生预期的结果，潜在影响的限度将远远超出评价领域。这些模式有可能被复制、维持和扩大到类似的背景下，在这种背景下，没有和没有得到充分服务的学龄儿童可以通过释放市场和这些自由企业的力量来支持，从而显著改善全国乃至全球类似国家的教育结果。

1201603 KhwajaDescription: This project by the Dr. Asim Khwaja, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University is to catalyze collaboration with scientists in Pakistan in the area of Evaluation and Strengthening Private Schools for the Rural Poor in Pakistan. The foreign collaborator is Ali Asjad Naqvi, Research Director at the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP). The emergence of low-cost, for-profit private schools serving the rural poor has transformed the education sector in Pakistan and low-income countries across the globe. Small rural private schools are among the fastest growing segments of the small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector in Pakistan. Recent research has demonstrated the power of these schools as they (i) serve the rural poor; (ii) employ, teach, and empower women; and (iii) outperform government schools in math, Urdu, English learning outcomes, in addition to (iv) producing higher levels of civic values among students. Despite the demonstrated strengths of private schools, constraints to continued growth of this sector are emerging. The PI plans a series of activities that will lay the groundwork for a rigorous empirical evaluation of new models for providing financing and education support to private schools in emerging economies. The project builds on existing work by the PI supported by NSF (SES 0962504: ?Understanding Education Markets Experimental and Observational Evidence from Pakistan?) and expands into the specific area of low-cost private schools. Research results have revealed that, in spite of their relative low cost, private schools in Pakistan outperform government schools, but they face constraints to continued growth and quality improvements. Motivated by a dearth of evidence on how best to support this dynamic sector, The PI will conduct the preliminary work that is needed to design, implement, and evaluate models to support private education entrepreneurs through the provision of financial, educational and operational support. This entails engaging with key international stakeholders and utilizing additional data sources to design a set of interventions and associated project evaluation methodology to support the sector and identify implementation partners for the interventions. Dr. Naqvi will play a key role in partnership development, designing project activities and providing local input to inform the research evaluation. Intellectual Merit: Cognizant of both the rapid rise of low-cost private schooling and the emerging constraints this sector faces, the PIs aim to fill a gap in the existing knowledge: how to interface, support, and enable the success of the private education sector. They plan to address a number questions still left unanswered by existing literature. What needs of private schools are the greatest, or which constraints are binding? What are the returns to investments in the low-cost private education sector, in terms of profitability and social outcomes? What financial mechanism (grants, loans, or equity investments) will generate the maximum return on investment and improvement in social outcomes? And finally, what is the optimal combination of financial and access to educational support to further strengthen this dynamic sector? Broader Impact: The empirical evidence generated by this study has the potential to make unique contributions to academia, and to also generate significant reaction among policymakers and practitioners in the NGO and private sectors. Should the model prove sustainable and generate the envisioned results, the limits for potential impact extend well beyond the evaluation areas. There is a potential for these models to be replicated, sustained, and scaled to similar contexts where un- and under-served school age children can be supported by unleashing the power of markets and these free enterprises to dramatically improve education outcomes across the country and ultimately across similar countries globally.