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

项目描述：该项目由哈佛大学肯尼迪学院的Asim Khwaja博士发起，旨在促进与巴基斯坦科学家在评估和加强私立学校为巴基斯坦农村贫困人口服务领域的合作。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）。为农村贫困人口服务的低成本、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）部门中增长最快的部分之一。最近的研究已经证明了这些学校的力量，因为它们(i)为农村贫困人口服务；（ii）雇用、教育和赋予妇女权力；（iii）在数学、乌尔都语、英语学习成果方面优于公立学校，此外（iv）在学生中培养更高水平的公民价值观。尽管私立学校表现出了实力，但限制该行业持续增长的因素正在显现。该倡议计划开展一系列活动，为对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。该项目建立在由NSF （SES 0962504: ?）支持的PI现有工作的基础上。了解教育市场（来自巴基斯坦的实验和观察证据？），并将其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，但它们在持续增长和质量改善方面面临限制。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将开展设计、实施和评估模式所需的初步工作，通过提供财政、教育和业务支持来支持私营教育企业家。这需要与主要的国际利益攸关方接触，并利用额外的数据来源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干预措施的实施伙伴。Naqvi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投入方面发挥关键作用。知识价值：认识到低成本私立学校的迅速崛起和该部门面临的新限制，pi旨在填补现有知识的空白：如何连接、支持和使私立教育部门取得成功。他们计划解决一些现有文献尚未解答的问题。私立学校最大的需求是什么，或者哪些限制是有约束力的？就盈利能力和社会效益而言，低成本私立教育部门的投资回报如何？什么样的金融机制（赠款、贷款或股权投资）将产生最大的投资回报和社会成果的改善？最后，财政和教育支持的最佳组合是什么，以进一步加强这个充满活力的部门？更广泛的影响：本研究产生的经验证据有可能对学术界做出独特的贡献，并在非政府组织和私营部门的政策制定者和实践者中产生重大反应。如果该模型证明是可持续的并产生预期的结果，则潜在影响的限制将远远超出评价领域。这些模式有可能被复制、维持并扩展到类似的环境中，通过释放市场和这些自由企业的力量，可以在全国范围内显著改善教育成果，并最终在全球类似国家得到支持，从而为未得到服务和服务不足的学龄儿童提供支持。

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.