Project Components
The project will support service delivery models through partnerships with non-government and low-cost private sector. It is different from traditional investment projects as GoB will provide the proceeds of the credit to the Balochistan Education Foundation (BEF), a semi-autonomous apex financing body with the mandate of supporting public-private and community partnerships in education. The project will have three components which will be implemented under partnership arrangements between BEF and three distinct types of implementation partners (IPs). These are: (i) Community Schools Implementation Partners (CIPs); (ii) Private School Implementation Partners (PIPs); and (iii) Technical Assistance Implementation Partners (TIPs). Under this project, approximately 1.8 million US $ (9% of the project cost) is unallocated at the start of the project to cover contingencies and the expansion of successful interventions. The components and the roles of the partners are described below.

Component I: Establishment of New Community Schools in Rural Areas:
Establishment of 650 new community schools by the end of the project, which will be formal primary schools, will be financed in rural areas where the community is able to enroll at least 20 students in the school, and there is no girls’ school within a radius of 2 KM. These schools will be set-up with the assistance of eligible NGOs, who will become BEF’s implementation partners (IPs). BEF would monitor performance of the schools and IPs; arrange for capacity building of the IPs and that of the schools through IPs, and will manage third party evaluations of these schools.

The IP would mobilize the community to ensure their participation in the selection of the Parent Education Committee (PEC). IPs will help the PEC get registered under voluntary Agencies Registration and Control ordinance 1961 existing law of Pakistan; train PEC members in management and finance; assist the PEC in starting and running the school; arrange for pre and in-service teacher training; prepare a baseline of the school, PEC and community; and monitor enrollment, teacher and student attendance, community participation, condition of the school and quality of learning. IPs engaged in mobilizing and organizing communities will get financial assistance for setting up schools in partnership with PECs, and for monitoring and supervision of schools.

The PEC would, with the assistance of the wider community, provide the premises; run school; arrange for and employ the teachers; open and maintain an account in a bank or Post office or any other financial arrangement would be ensured for areas where maintaining an account is not possible; keep financial and meeting records; ensure proper maintenance and physical condition of the premises; and oversee enrollment, check drop-outs and performance of the school. Through the IPs, with whom the BEF will seek to establish long--term partnerships, the PECs will be provided funds for teacher salary and other recurrent costs of the schools which will be determined by the BEF in-line with the market rates. These schools would continue under the management of the PECs even after the end of the project period. The project will fund the recurrent costs for the first two years of the schools operation through the BEF, and the government will fund the recurrent costs of the schools with a one line transfer to the BEF reflected in GoBs annual recurrent budget starting from the third year of each school’s operation.

If School successfully maintains enrolment for two years and community donates land by formally transferring ownership of land by mutation to the PEC, the project will provide appropriate funding through BEF for a new permanent school building to the PEC according to enrolment. Construction will be undertaken by the community according to an earthquake resistant prepared design. The BEF will get clearance of the design from Bank.

Component II: Establishment of Private Fellowship Schools:
Based on the past successful experience of fellowship schools under BPEP in the province, the project would support establishment of new Private Fellowship Schools to promote access to low fee quality private education in semi-urban and urban areas. Each school would receive a per capita subsidy, as per uniform rates determined by the BEF in consultation with private sector operators applying for establishment of school(s). These private sector operators will become BEF’s IP, up to a maximum period of 4 years to cover the costs of the teachers, the quality inputs and monthly savings. New schools would be established if there are at least 50 children (age 4-9) out of school and with no government primary school or any other school for girls in a radius of 1 km. An additional school in the same locality can also be established if it is justified due to overcrowding. While these schools will charge low fees, unlike the community schools in rural areas, previous experience with fellowship schools in urban Balochistan, and rural Punjab has shown that the schools are still able to attract students from relatively poor households.

Component III: Capacity Building:
A: Training and Skill Development:
i) Quality Improvement

The following steps will be taken to improve quality of education:

(a) Appointing a local teacher: Local teachers will be appointed in community schools so as to increase the probability of teacher’s presence and student-teacher contact hours. The PEC, with technical support from the concerned IP and the BEF, will select teachers through tests based on the teachers’ core competencies with a minimum qualification of Matric. A common test will be used by each IP for selection of teachers to achieve the following two-fold objectives. The test will help determine merit, if number of candidates is more than the required number of teachers for a community school. The test will also be helpful, and will be administered in any case, in assessing newly recruited teachers’ induction training needs.

(b) Close school monitoring and supervision: Low teacher and student attendance adversely affects learning time and thus quality of learning. The PECs will be trained to monitor and increase teacher and student attendance, provide requisite facilities to the teachers and manage school affairs. Monitoring by IP will be based on core teaching and school leadership standards.

(c) In-time availability of free textbooks: One of the common issues in rural areas is the non-availability or delayed availability of textbooks together with the problem that several parents cannot afford to purchase textbooks. A little or no learning takes place in the absence of basic textbooks. In-time availability of free textbooks will be ensured to each child in the schools established under the project.

(d) Teachers’ professional development: Only teacher is responsible for ensuring effective teaching and learning. The training will have little effect on teaching practices if adequate attention not paid to monitoring, accountability, and systematic budgetary provision for learning materials, in addition to textbooks and teacher guides and other support materials. The project, therefore, will focus on the following five key interrelated essential elements of teachers’ professional development of which training is one part:

Development of core competencies for teachers for teacher’s induction training and in-service programs, their performance monitoring and generally for developing standards in the teaching profession.

Incentives: To make increased probability of teacher attendance and teaching, in addition to the regular compensation/salary, different possibilities will be explored as for example: (a) personal support such as assistance with housing or transportation, if local candidates are not available; (b) adequate honoraria to attend or provide training; (c) recognition of the teachers’ work by significant people in the area and outside. Incentives, including salary increase will be linked with performance.

In-service training: Holding of in-service training courses will be an important part of professional development. Training will be based on needs assessed through induction tests as mentioned earlier. Emphasis of the training will be on enhancing content knowledge, skills, methodology, quality and impact of training. Training content will also include techniques of multi-grade teaching, ways to make school environment attractive for the children, resources management and use of local no-cost / low cost materials, organizing co-curricular activities, classroom management and taking care of basic health and hygiene needs of the children. Duration of training in a year will be 4 weeks at the minimum and at least twice a year, preferably in a batch of no more than 15-20 teachers to enable them practice the ideas, which are imparted through training.

Linking training and incentives: If teachers are un-trained, training can lead to their certification by giving weight age to each training course and in-house assignments. This will serve as incentive for teachers. If teachers further improve their professional and academic qualifications they can be given special increase in salary.

Direct, ongoing classroom support: Only teacher training is not enough if not supported by ongoing classroom support. Firstly, a systemic follow-up will be put in place to deal with the everyday classroom issues. As a general rule, post-training follow-up and support programs will focus on continuous development to guide, monitor, and support necessary skills, knowledge and new ideas. The follow-up will also focus on providing teacher guides, and other professional materials for lesson plans and classroom management to develop further ideas and skills including development of varied teaching ideas. A second model, which will also be considered, is a mobile mentoring program where the emphasis is primarily on experienced resource teachers regularly visiting a group of schools to mentor and bring teaching ideas and aids and provide advice to teachers. Good experience has already been gained using this model in the Balochistan.

(e) Student achievement testing: Grades in which children will be admitted will vary from school to school. Some may have only Katchi or Katchi with grade-1 and others may have children admitted in grade 2 or 3 and above because there is a possibility that children were previously studying in schools outside the settlement but dropped out due to miscellaneous reasons. Teachers of the respective schools supported under the project will administer language and maths tests at the time of new admissions to establish baselines of learning levels in language, maths and social skills for students in various grades. Same or similar tests will be administered at the end of each academic year to determine the incremental learning. Schools will keep a record of student learning achievements. A of 3% and 5% annual increase, respectively, in language and mathematics will be set as a monitoring indicator.

(f) School Budgets: Part of the on-going support will be development and use of teachers and student made materials. The IPs will allocate funds for provision of such educational materials to be used by the teachers in the daily classroom activities. The funds may also be required for maintenance, utility bills and other needs.

Delivery System for the Quality Measures:
Teacher appointment, monitoring and supervision, provision of free textbooks, and incentives to teachers: The IPs will include an appropriate methodology in their proposal and will include costs of these interventions accordingly. Guidance will be provided by BEF on the subject to the IPs.

Teachers’ professional Development: In the past, BEF managed training of private school teachers on small scale with the help of government training institutions. BEF/NGOs have no capacity to practice ideas on teacher professional development. Therefore, professional development will be organized in following ways:

(i) Development of core competencies and tests: The work already carried out under National Education Assessment System (NEAS) and the Provincial Education Assessment Center (PEACE) for development of students learning competencies and tests for teachers will be used. Students learning competencies will also serve as teachers’ competencies as far as content knowledge of various subjects is concerned. For competencies like pedagogical, multi-grade teaching and classroom management, lesson planning and learning needs of different groups, the BEF will seek help from the PEACE Balochistan, federal NEAS center and Provincial Institute of Teacher Training (PITE) to develop such competencies, if not already available. NEAS and PEACE will also help in developing student tests as discussed above.

(ii) In-service training: Government managed PITE has adequate physical facilities and has formed a consortium with the University of Balochistan, Bureau of Curriculum (where PEACE is located) and an NGO. The consortium have developed several modules and have developed capacity to run in-service training programs by creating a team of Master Trainers (MTs), establishing clusters in six districts, and training selected primary school teachers as mentors to provide on-going in-school support. The mentors are given 10-week intensive training (6-weeks face to face training, 3-weeks of field assignment and one week of feedback). The IPs, who do not have in-house capacity to train teachers, will collaborate to train teachers in viable clusters of nearby schools where feasible and will manage to purchase training package with the help of BEF from PITE led consortium. The IPs having the capacity and expertise to train teachers will help other IPs in training teachers and / or BEF will help IPs manage training if schools are scattered over disjoining districts. In all these possibilities, different IPs will work together and will share the costs of training and other aspects of professional development. Duration of training in a year will be 4 weeks at the minimum and at least twice a year.

(iii) On-going support to teachers: Provision of on-going support will be managed by each IP for its schools. Support will be managed by the following means: (a) School visits: IPs will identify mentors and organize their training or mobile training unit will be established, if feasible, to provide on-going support; (b) Teacher support materials: Teachers’ guides, lesson plans and other materials already developed under various programs will be used. The IPs will preferably select textbooks for use in their schools, which are also accompanied by teachers’ guides and other support materials; and (c) In-school professional meetings: As part of on-going support, the teachers of each school, if there are more than one teacher, will meet daily, or at least weekly, in a specified period to discuss teaching-learning issues, problems, new ideas, resources, and will give demonstration lessons or parts of lessons and then discuss the teaching and planning needs of the school. Each IP will organize outside help as indicated by their teachers.

ii: Training of PECs, IPs and BEF Staff
All PEC members and the principal and chief administrator of all project supported schools will be trained, in school management, book-keeping/ accounting, participatory techniques, gender, and monitoring and supervision.

To assure effective delivery of services, training would also be provided for professional staff at BEF and at its implementing partners (IPs). These professionals would be trained in appraisal, monitoring and evaluation, financial and overall management. Field staff would also be trained in social mobilization, training of teachers as well as how to assist localities in setting up private schools. Training packages will be procured from the market.