Capacity development for education service delivery in Pakistan: Top‐down devolution
| Author | David Watson,Adnan Qadir Khan |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.547 |
| Published date | 01 February 2010 |
| Date | 01 February 2010 |
CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT FOR EDUCATION SERVICE
DELIVERY IN PAKISTAN: TOP-DOWN DEVOLUTION
DAVID WATSON
1
*AND ADNAN QADIR KHAN
2
1
Governance and Development Consultant, UK
2
Queen’s University, Canada
SUMMARY
The historical, political, socio-cultural and institutional context in the public service of Pakistan is not auspicious for the delivery
of social services such as education. The then military regime introduced radical devolution reforms in 2001 that promised
improvements in service delivery by enhancing accountabilities and capacities for change in local government. However the
political economy of this top-down devolution has proved contentious. It established new powerstructures and authorities over
resources at local levels but without concurrent efforts to enhance service delivery capacities. This article examines capacity
issues in two cases of capacity development in education service delivery in Pakistan’slargest province. The Punjab Education
Sector Reform Programme (PESRP) was managed by a provincial-level implementation unit; the StrategicPolicy Unit (SPU) of
City District Government Faisalabad was a local government project supported by technicalco-operation. Both delivered major
improvements in education delivery capacity in just 4 years, after decades of delivery stagnation and worsening education
indicators. The sustainability of these initiatives is in doubt, as political economy factors remain a major impediment to devolved
service delivery in Pakistan. Copyright #2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words — devolution; education service delivery; local government capacity development
INTRODUCTION
Despite having a healthy economic growth rate over the past 60 years, Pakistan’s development experience has been
marked by a conspicuously low level of human development for the majority of its citizens. Pakistan ranks 136th
out of 177 countries on the 2007 Human Development Index (UNDP, 2008). Its literacy rate is less than 50 per cent
(compared to an average of 60% in Least Developed Countries); only 35.4 per cent of females are literate (44% in
LDCs); gross enrolment rates in education are 40 per cent (48% in LDCs).
1
Easterly (2003, p. 439) has described
Pakistan’s development experience as the paradox of ‘growthwithout development’. Part of the explanation of why
this potentially prosperous country is so ill-equipped, is historically low public expenditure on basic services. Other
explanations for poor education service performance include inadequate attention and approaches to, the training
and professional development of public sector teachers, and education managers and administrators. But a deeper
explanation lies in political economy factors that produce these failures.
In 2004, several major initiatives were launched in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, to address chronic
deficiencies in education service delivery. Two of these have proved highly successful. At provincial level, the
Punjab Education Sector Reform Programme (PESRP), steered by its Programme Monitoring and Implementation
Unit (PMIU), has injected unprecedentedly large volumes of resources into district governments, with positive
effects on key education indicators. The Strategic Policy Unit (SPU) of Faisalabad City District Government
(CDGF), assisted by the DFID-funded Support to Decentralised Local Government in Faisalabad Project (SDLGF),
was the only local government organisational development technical assistance initiative actually based at district
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 30, 11–26 (2010)
Published online 12 October 2009 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.547
*Correspondence to: D. Watson, 10, Tanyard Drive, Hale Barns, Cheshire WA15 0BS, UK. E-mail: david.watson71@btinternet.com
1
All data in this paragraph are from UNDP (2008).
Copyright #2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
level. It has delivered major improvements in the quality of education delivered at school level through pioneering
the ‘Whole School Development’ concept.
This article explores how these contrasting, yet complementary, initiatives have enhanced capacities of
the public service at two levels of government to deliver improved education to poor households, despite the
formidable obstacles posed by the historical, political, socio-cultural and institutional context of the public service
in Pakistan.
2
It draws some encouraging lessons from these experiences, but also highlights the major importance of
political economy factors in public sector capacity development in Pakistan. These factors raise questions about the
sustainability of these initiatives.
The article explores the internal system dynamics of capacity, endogenous change, and performance as they
have been affected by the context of the interventions (particularly governance and public administration), actors
(provincial and district politicians, bureaucrats and service users) and the role of external players (the World Bank,
and DFID principally). The notion of capacity employed here focuses most directly on a narrow definition: the
capability of an organisational system to achieve its objectives by producing developmental results. The discussion
of the cases illustrates, however, the importance of other dimensions of capacity: abilities to create an adequate
operating space; thereby to develop a vision and strategies to achieve it; to act and self-organise; to adapt and self-
renew (see Baser and Morgan, 2008). Table 2 summarises for both cases the factors, strategies or achievements
which were instrumental in developing the service delivery capacities that are the focus of this article.
DEVOLUTION IN PAKISTAN
Traditional explanations for the failures of education sector have focused on resource allocation and
implementation issues. Recent literature sees Pakistan’s poor social development outcomes as a consequence
of governance structures that weakened political and bureaucratic accountability to citizens (Keefer et al., 2006).
Analysts blame these accountability failures on three key features of the old state system: centralisation,
bureaucratisation and clientelist politics (see Islam, 2004; Siddiqui, 2005). These have led to an increasing
recognition of the importance of governance reforms, including devolution, that enable citizens to hold the state
directly accountable and improve social (and education sector) outcomes. There is also (belated) recognition of the
significance of capacity development initiatives to enhance the awareness and ability of citizens to articulate needs
or grievances, and of developing the skills, confidence and attitudes of civil servants to respond effectively to such
popular demands.
3
Both the cases illustrate how such capacity development can be successfully approached.
Historical background
Devolution in Pakistan has a long history, but a constant feature in the evolution of local governments since colonial
times is that their creation has been prompted by the need to legitimise political centralisation strategies of non-
representative centres (the military in post-independence period) (Cheema et al., 2006). This strategy has also
included limiting the influence of political parties and dissolving the elected tiers at the level of the provinces and
the centre. These decentralisation efforts have thus resulted in lack of political ownership and in province-local
government tensions.
After coming into power through a coup in 1999, which dissolved elected governments at federal and provincial
level, General Musharraf introduced wide-ranging devolution reforms through the Devolution Plan 2000. The
driving motive of the reforms was to improve service delivery responsiveness and accountability, and to empower
communities. This new structure is illustrated in Figure 1.
2
The authors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the comments from Khatib Alam, former Director of the Support to Decentralised Local
Government Faisalabad Project on an earlier version of this article.
3
The head of the National Reconstruction Bureau, the body spearheading devolution reforms, perceived capacity buildingin terms of popular
empowerment and provision of more information to ordinary people, to provide prospects for greater voice from users of services (Watsonand
Khan, 2005a).
Copyright #2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. 30, 11–26 (2010)
DOI: 10.1002/pad
12 D. WATSON AND A. Q. KHAN
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