Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) - 2003 - Pakistan

Abstract
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Whether one is in favor of private education or not, it is here to stay and there is a critical need to understand this new environment. Unfortunately, little is known about the private sector and what its growth implies for the provision of education. There are important questions we need to answer before engaging in productive debate about how education can be best provided in the Pakistani context. For instance:
a. Where are private schools setting up? Are they only being established in urban areas and only for the elite?
b. What is the quality of education in private sector schools? How does it compare to public schools?
c. Are the poor being left out? Is the private sector creating two classes of people in Pakistan—those who can afford private education and those who cannot?
d. What is the effect of private schools on government schools?

Geographic coverage
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Rural Punjab, Pakistan

Analysis unit
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How much a child learns depends on teachers, parents and the child herself. How these three coordinate and work together also depends on the head-teacher and the educational institutes that support the delivery of education. Our research strategy reflects this belief. We survey both schools and households and test children to assess how much they are learning. Here is a brief overview of the survey structure:
a. Teachers: Rosters with basic information for all teachers in the schools and detailed interviews with the class-teachers of the children tested.
b. Head-teachers: A detailed questionnaire with the head-teacher with basic information about his/her background and teaching experience.
c. Schools: We also collected information on schools, the children who come, the fees charged (private schools) and their current needs.
d. Children: For a random sample of 10 children from those tested the survey collects basic information on their households (parental education, assets and brothers and sisters), how far they travel to get to school, and their height and weight.
e. Households: We complete household surveys for 16 households in every village, with information on what parents know and what parents do with regard to their children’s education. In addition, these surveys contain the basic information on expenditures, assets, education and health that will allow us to look at the relationship between these factors and educational performance. For instance, when the mother is sick, does the child perform worse in school?

Kind of data
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Survey Data

Sampling procedure
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The sample comprises 112 villages in 3 districts of Punjab-Attock, Faisalabad and Rahim Yar Khan. The districts represent an accepted stratification of the province into North (Attock), Central (Faisalabad) and South (Rahim Yar Khan). The 112 villages in these districts were chosen randomly from the list of all villages with an existing private school. This allows us to look at differences between private and public schools in the same village. Although these villages are thus bigger and richer than average villages in these districts, we believe this is a forward-looking strategy and the insights earned here will soon be applicable to a significant fraction of all villages in the country.

Sampling deviation
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None.

Research instrument
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The LEAPS project consists of a variety of questionnaires distributed to different groups in each village in order to obtain a complete picture of the educational environment.

School Survey: Head teachers and school ownders were asked a variety of questions about about infrastructure, prices, costs and other facilities available in the neighborhood of the school.
Teacher surveys: The LEAPS project administered three sets of teacher surveys. A shorter roster was administered for all teachers in the school and for all teachers who had left the school in the previous two years. This roster yields information on above 5000 teachers in the LEAPS project schools. A longer questionnaire was administered to the teachers of the tested children. This questionnaire includes detailed socioeconomic information about the teacher and yields data on just above 800 teachers. In addition, a questionnaire was also administered to the head-teacher (where the head-teacher was different from the class teacher) with questions on management practices and bonus schemes, along with other modules.

Child Tests: All children in Class 3 (approximately 12,000) were tested in the LEAPS project schools with specially designed tests in Urdu, Mathematics and English. These tests were administered by the LEAPS team to ensure impartial test circumstances. Further, for a sample of 10 randomly selected children in every class (roughly 6000 in total), a short questionnaire was administered to the child with information on parental literacy, family structure and household assets (in classes with less than 10 children, all children were chosen).

Household surveys: Information on the educational inputs that children receive from home, a full-fledged household questionnaire was fielded for 1800 households in the sampled villages, with a special focus on covering those households with a child enrolled in class 3. To ensure that we could compare the activities of enrolled with out-of-school children we also sampled households with eligible kids who were not in school in a stratified fashion.

Response rate
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The attrition has been remarkably small, averaging 3-4 percent in each year.

摘要
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无论是否支持私立教育，其存在已然不可避免，因此深入理解这一新兴环境显得尤为关键。遗憾的是，关于私营部门及其在教育提供方面增长所蕴含的意义知之甚少。在就如何在巴基斯坦背景下提供最佳教育进行富有成效的辩论之前，我们有必要回答一些重要的问题：
a. 私立学校设立于何地？它们是否仅在城市地区建立，且仅面向精英阶层？
b. 私立部门学校的办学质量如何？其与公立学校相比又如何？
c. 穷人是否被边缘化？私营部门是否在巴基斯坦造成了两个阶层——能够承担私立教育的人和无法承担的人？
d. 私立学校对公立学校有何影响？
地理覆盖范围
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农村旁遮普，巴基斯坦
分析单元
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儿童的学习成果取决于教师、家长以及儿童自身。这三者之间的协调与合作也依赖于校长及支持教育提供的教育机构。我们的研究策略体现了这一信念。我们调查了学校和家庭，并测试儿童的学习成果，以下为调查结构的简要概述：
a. 教师：提供学校中所有教师的简要信息，并对受测儿童的任课教师进行详细访谈。
b. 校长：对校长进行详细的问卷调查，包括其背景和教学经验的基本信息。
c. 学校：我们还收集了有关学校、学生来源、学费收取（私立学校）以及学校当前需求的信息。
d. 儿童：对随机抽取的10名受测儿童进行问卷调查，收集其家庭的基本信息（父母的受教育程度、资产和兄弟姐妹）、上学距离以及身高和体重。
e. 家庭：我们对每个村庄的16个家庭进行了家庭调查，包括父母对儿童教育的认知及其行为，以及与教育绩效相关的支出、资产、教育健康等基本信息。例如，当母亲生病时，儿童在学校的表现是否会变差。
数据类型
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调查数据
抽样程序
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样本包括旁遮普省3个地区（阿托克、费萨拉巴德和拉希姆·亚尔·汗）的112个村庄。这些地区代表了该省被接受的分层，包括北部（阿托克）、中部（费萨拉巴德）和南部（拉希姆·亚尔·汗）。这些地区中的112个村庄是从现有私立学校所在的所有村庄中随机选择的。这使得我们能够观察同一村庄中私立学校和公立学校之间的差异。尽管这些村庄比这些地区的平均村庄更大、更富裕，但我们认为这是一个具有前瞻性的策略，在这里获得的见解将很快适用于该国大部分村庄。
抽样偏差
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无。
研究工具
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LEAPS项目包括向每个村庄的不同群体分发各种问卷，以获得教育环境的完整图景。
学校调查：询问校长和学校业主关于学校基础设施、价格、成本以及其他邻近设施的问题。
教师调查：LEAPS项目进行了三套教师调查。对学校中所有教师以及在前两年离开学校的所有教师进行简短的登记。这份登记表提供了LEAPS项目学校中超过5000名教师的信息。对受测儿童的教师进行较长的问卷调查。这份问卷包括教师的社会经济信息，并提供了关于800多名教师的数据。此外，还对校长（如果校长与任课教师不同）进行了问卷调查，包括关于管理实践和奖金计划的问题，以及其他模块。
儿童测试：LEAPS项目学校中的所有三年级（约12000名）儿童都接受了乌尔都语、数学和英语的特别设计测试。这些测试由LEAPS团队进行，以确保测试环境的公正性。此外，对每个班级随机选取的10名儿童（总计约6000名）进行了简短的问卷调查，收集了关于父母的识字程度、家庭结构和家庭资产的信息（在班级少于10名儿童的情况下，选择了所有儿童）。
家庭调查：对样本村庄中的1800户家庭进行了全面的家庭调查，收集了有关儿童从家庭获得的教育投入的信息，特别关注那些有三年级学生的家庭。为了确保能够比较在学儿童与未上学儿童的活动，我们还按分层抽样方式选取了有资格但未在校的儿童的家庭。
应答率
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损失率非常小，平均每年为3-4%。