The Relative Effectiveness of Government and Private Schools in Pakistan: Are Girls Worse Off?

The objective of the study is two-fold whereby it initially aims to determine the bias in allocation of educational resources faced by girls that significantly increases the probability of being enrolled in public schools and whether this bias forces them to study in low quality schools. The study compares the relative effectiveness of private and public schools in face of the recent growth of private schools that charge high fee for quality education. Ordinary Least Square regression analysis performed on data extracted from purpose-built school-based survey 2002-2003 in Lahore district, province Punjab, Pakistan reveals that households tend to allocate fewer resources to girls education as opposed to boys education which results in fewer girls to be enrolled in high fee charging private schools as opposed to boys.

An analysis of the learning gaps present in students of grade 8 across schools types indicate that private schools provide higher quality education and are 19% more effective in imparting mathematical skills and 8% more effective in terms of literacy skills in contrast to government schools. The overall analysis indicates that higher probability of girls being enrolled into government schools due to under allocation of educational resources by households results in them to attain lower quality of education and therefore they lose out on both fronts. 

The research paper can be found here.