We are dealing with Government Girls Primary Schools (GGPS) in Punjab, Pakistan, the goal of a well-functioning education system is quality education for all children, in an inclusive and conducive learning environment. Such a system provides children with convenient access to school so that they are able to enroll, continue their schooling, and learn well enough to gain meaningful employment and to contribute to society. Ideally, it means getting children into school at the right age, establishing a strong foundation for future learning, and building upon that foundation with age and context-appropriate material, taught by competent and responsive teachers, in well-resourced classrooms. It means regularly collecting data on schooling and learning outcomes and using this data to inform continuous improvement. It also means providing targeted support to enable all students to stay in school, and to learn well, regardless of their personal limitations. In Punjab, successive governments have undertaken a series of reforms to enable the public education sector to improve its performance. These reforms have enabled the Government of the Punjab (GoPb)‘s School Education Department (SED) to improve school supply so that, to date, 12.4 million boys and girls are enrolled in 52,470 public schools
across the province. A series of successive household surveys have reported improvements in the province‘s primary level (ages 5-9) participation rate from 84.8% in 2011 to 90.4% in 2017. This improvement has been driven by campaigns and incentives to increase enrolment in government schools and government-funded private schools, especially in under-served parts of the province. Basic infrastructure has also improved, so that 95% of government schools have toilets, boundary walls, electricity and running water.
Girl students literacy and numeracy levels have also exhibited a steady increase. In a standardized, sample-based early-grade literacy and numeracy assessment (English, Urdu and Math) administered to Grade 3 students in March 2015, students only responded correctly to 56% of questions on Grade 1 and 2 literacy and numeracy student learning outcomes (SLOs). In March
2017, students responded correctly to 77% of questions against the same SLOs. Punjab also outperforms other provinces in the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) assessments.
Despite these improvements, Punjab still has approximately five million out of school children (OOSC), out of which over three million are of secondary school age. Regional disparities also persist, with children in the southern part of the province having relatively limited access to schooling. The southern districts of Rahim Yar Khan, D.G. Khan and Rajanpur have the highest
number of OOSC in the province. Girls are less likely to enroll into school, and more likely to drop out earlier, than boys. For every 100 students enrolled in Katchi grade, only 28 students remain until Grade 5 (31% for boys and 25% for girls).