The Impact of School Facilities on Drop outs in Pakistan

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.