Background

Literacy in Pakistan has been growing at a very slow rate. It rose at the rate of almost 0.5 % per year during the first three decades or so and about 1% per year during 1981-1998. Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey 2004-2005 has reported an overall literacy rate of 53%(for population 10 years and older), with a gender gap of 25% i.e. male literacy rate of 65% and female literacy rate of 40%. Whereas the policy reforms in the education sector revolve around addressing core issues of access and quality, the fact stands that education service delivery at the basic level in Pakistan has remained confronted with a multitude and multidimensional challenges. A number of these have emerged due to inadequacy of issue-based research in the education system.

To deal with the core issue of the basic learning needs of the society at large and to reinvestigate efforts for achieving the MDG goals, the MoE had come up with strategic frame work through: The Road Ahead, Education Sector Reform Action Plan 2001-04 and National Plan of Action on Education for All (2001-2015). Despite, implementing this radical reform process in the education sector, significant and visible improvement in education scenario is yet to be achieved. All this has highlighted the need to bring the research interventions closer to the decision making process to ensure that initiatives in education sector are upgrading and continuing to provide needs based quality and adequate services to their beneficiaries. This is also essential to critically validate and evaluate education initiatives.

Whereas efforts to institutionalize research and evaluation in education sector have manifested themselves via the development of internal capacity to undertake small scale qualitative research, documentation of success stories and end of project reports, annual or biannual review of specific project indicators and compilation of secondary data, have not been sufficient for identifying causes of failure of reforms and their remedies nor for undertaking objective validations, nation wide and sector wide needs assessment and large scale base line survey. The educational development research center at NEF will contribute towards a higher level of research skills and capacities in objective assessment, in-depth examination and analysis of the existing education initiatives accompanied by suitable strategies to address the gaps and strengthen programs along with communication plans and advocacy to effect policy development, decision making, program planning and implementation.

Objectives

• To identify gaps and weaknesses in the education system & synthesize the knowledge base for informed decision-making and strategy formulation for critical issues in education and development.
  
• To share best practices and lessons learned for optimal education development by forming collaboration with Universities, Education Foundations, donors, NGOs/CBOs, like-minded organizations and others.
  
• To influence educational policy at the provincial and national level by initiating serious policy interventions through extensive application of qualitative and quantitative research.

Recent Research Activities

Research is being conducted by different universities in all provinces. Currently a research is being carried out on

"Determinants and structure of Divergent Behavior among Gross attendance, Dropout and Net Attendance in Public Primary Schools"

This research is carried out by following universities:

• Balochistan University , Quetta
• Sindh University , Jamshoro
• Gomal University , Dera Ismail Khan