WUNRN
PAKISTAN - MADRASSA RELIGIOUS SCHOOL
ENROLLMENT - HARVARD RESEARCH - GENDER
Direct Link to Research Report:
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"Boys are more likely to be
enrolled in madrassas compared to girls. The census reports that there are
only 43 females enrolled in madrassas for every 100 males. This imbalance is
significantly greater than the 68 females for every 100 enrolled males in
overall education. For both boys and girls, madrassa enrollment starts at the
same age between 5 and 9 years, but girls' enrollment drops off sharply while
boys' enrollment jumps for children between 10 and 14, and then tapers off in
the mid-twenties."....
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Religious School
Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data
By Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Tristan Zajonc
Working Paper Number:RWP05-024
Submitted:
03/03/2005
Abstract
Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the
high and increasing enrollment in Pakistani religious schools, commonly known
as madrassas. Given the importance placed on the subject by policy makers in
Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of the reports
and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or
established statistical methodologies. This paper uses published data sources
and a census of schooling choice to show that existing estimates are inflated
by an order of magnitude. Madrassas account for less than 1 percent of all
enrollment in the country and there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in
recent years. The educational landscape in Pakistan has changed substantially
in the last decade, but this is due to an explosion of private schools, an
important fact that has been left out of the debate on Pakistani education.
Moreover, when we look at school choice, we find that no one explanation fits
the data. While most existing theories of madrassa enrollment are based on
household attributes (for instance, a preference for religious schooling or the
household’s access to other schooling options) the data show that among
households with at least one child enrolled in a madrassa, 75 percent send
their second (and/or third) child to a public or private school or both. Widely
promoted theories simply do not explain this substantial variation within
households.
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