The Millennium Accelerated Framework (MAF)

The story goes something like this: In 2011, UN Agencies took notice of some countries that were off track to meeting their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and engaged with them to accelerate their progress. Each country had to develop a Country Report on the current status of education MDGs, highlighting relevant plans and strategies that could help improve the situation by 2015.

To prepare the Country Report, the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training initiated consultations with the Provincial/Area Education Departments. In 2013, the Millennium Accelerated Framework (MAF) Plan was formulated. The objective of this was to accelerate the progress towards achieving the education MDGs in the next three years.

The MAFs (2013-16) focus is on reducing the number of out-of-school children, increased retention, and improving quality of education. The plan has four strategies - enrolling out-of-school children through motivational campaigns and enrolment drives; increasing enrolment through provision of an additional room in schools and provision of a teacher to accommodate new students; establishment of two-room and/or one room non-formal schools; and incentives for attracting and retaining students via stipends, food-for-education, uniforms, etc.

A seminar in Islamabad last week, organized by Alif Ailaan and SDPI, highlighted the progress made during the first year of this plan, i.e. 2013-2014. Firstly, data gaps and the credibility of reliable statistics were highlighted as a major issue. A national plan to facilitate coordination between national statistics actors (PBS, MoF) and other development stakeholders was emphasized.

Nevertheless, the data for gauging the progress of the MAF was obtained from a variety of sources, such as Provincial/Area EMIS Databases. The results show that Pakistan fell short at every measure. The federal, provincial, and area governments seem to have partially implemented just some of the strategies; evidently there is a lack of data in the opening of new schools, while there were no investments made whatsoever in incentives to children over the period.

However, all was not lost; the net enrolment rate grew from 68 percent in 2012-13 to 72 percent in 2013-14. Although this fell short of the MAFs targets of 70 percent and 75 percent, respectively, it nevertheless marked a growth of 4 percent year-on-year. This 4 percent growth is unprecedented in the past fifty years.

Perhaps this growth rate is as a beacon of hope, or perhaps it is the result of unreliable data. But in any case, the MAF seems to have failed. Policy recommendations include raising the education budget to 4 percent of GDP and a minimum of 20 percent development budget by the provincial and area governments. Moreover, there needs to be an independent data collection and monitoring system, along with third-party validation for cross checking data and monitoring progress.