Growth Inclusiveness and Devaluation of Power, Myth or Reality. A case Study of Pakistan’s Education Sector

Abstract

The education system of the country faces problems in quality of education, accessibility and equal opportunity forever at all level. To minimize these constraints, successive government reforms are desirable for Pakistan’s economic and societal development. This study analyzes consequence of devaluation of power (famously known as “The 18th amendment”) through a new approach called the inclusive growth. For this purposes a social opportunity function is used to assess firstly access to average education opportunities available to the population and secondly how these educational opportunities are shared and received by the population in the pre-amendment and post amendment. The 18th amendment is noted advantageous for all provinces in term of improvement of NER primary education. The change in average access to primary education is recorded more than 20 percent on average in the post-amendment. More than eight percent change is observed in the secondary education level in the post-legislation. However, the social opportunity curves shifted upward for all provinces shows a minor growth in the literacy rate for pre and post-amendment era except Sindh province which show shift in the only pre-amendment while the curves overlapped each other for post-legislation. The equity index of opportunity (EIO) in absolute term for NER of all education level (primary, secondary and literacy rate) for both legislations period remained less than one for both study period confirmed inequitable distribution of net enrollment opportunities for the all provinces. While in relative terms the equity of opportunities the NER primary level is equitable for both pre and post-amendment era of the study periods for Punjab and KPK provinces indorsing inclusiveness of primary enrollment opportunities for these two provinces and unequitable for remaining two provinces (Sindh and Blochistan) in pre and post amendment except only last study period of post-amendment era.