Low-Cost Private Schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan: What evidence to support sustainable scale-up?

A protocol document that details the background of DFIDs review and presents the methodology that will be adopted in order to conduct the review in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The paper identifies the procedure that will be undertaken in regards to conducting the Department for International Development’s Systematic Review No.29 whereby the basic purpose of the review is to understand the factors that can allow sustainability of scaling up private schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The document reveals that the review is conducted in order to understand the best practices in sustainable development policy and evaluate the technicalities associated with scaling up private schools. The protocol defines the methodology that will be adopted for the review including search from journals, libraries, and websites and also highlights the key terms that will be used. The document further sheds light on the procedure that will be adopted for compilation and documentation of data and the specific analytic approach that would be adopted by the review team.

The protocol concludes that in light of existing literature, coding analysis and expert opinion generated, three areas will be focused upon by the research team in conducting the review. Initially, they must ascertain the factors that have an impact on sustainability of private schools with low cost structures. Secondly, the research team must analyze the methods through which private schools and public private partnership can be scaled while ensuring sustainability and thirdly, they must identify the challenges that would be faced in the development project within Afghanistan and Pakistan.