Donor coordination in an uncoordinated development environment? The case of education in Pakistan

The study aims to highlight the gap between the ideology stated by Paris Declaration and the current state of donor aid within Pakistan and emphasizes on the complexities of government structure within the country. Research reveals that following the criteria defined by Paris Declaration such increasing the percentage of program aid and reducing parallel project implementation units aligned with donor based projects are difficult to implement in Pakistan that currently faces several issues within its development environmental structure. Program based approaches (PBA) are now implemented globally but Pakistan continues to face pressure at federal and provincial level to continue projectisation of development as opposed to PBA and most of the pressure arises as a result of distinction between the development budget  and regular recurrent budget.

Projects within Pakistan face several challenges including extensive approval procedure, inability to scale up project at national level, personnel challenges and external pressure. Mechanism adopted for harmonization of donor aid in the educational sector such as sector-wide approach (SWAP), the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), and the role of the Donor Education Group (DEG) continue to face barriers in implementation and therefore the paper recommends that existing policies must be analyzed while attempt must be made establish links between projects and program in order to arrive at better educational outcomes.