Abstract:
Investment in human capital has the potential to promote economic growth and
alleviate poverty. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s performance on this front has been poor
with 19% of the primary school age children being out of school and one out of every
three children out-of-school having dropped out. This study aims to explore the
impact of attributes of school facilities on primary school dropouts in Pakistan. I use
the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) data set from 2013, 2014 and 2015 to
study the impact of school facilities (both public and private schools) on proportion of
dropouts in a village. I also draw a statistical comparison of the impact of school
facilities on primary and secondary level dropouts. Better school facilities,
specifically the educational qualification of private schools teachers, significantly
reduce the proportion of dropouts in a village. However, once the student proceeds to
the secondary level, the effect of school and teacher quality indicators diminish.
These results indicate the need for policy makers and educators to emphasize on
better teacher quality to retain students in primary school.
