May 2013: Alif Ailaan – a DfID funded, education focused data and advocacy campaign – and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) – an Islamabad based Pakistani think tank launched the first ever Pakistan District Education Rankings in May of 2013.

I was the lead author on the report and led the data team which collated the data and produced the report. The rankings were based on a similar approach used by UNESCO for their international education index. The data were gathered from two government and one private datasets and two different education indices were calculated.

The first, the education score, is a weighted average of aggregate district level averages for enrollment (access), retention to 5th grade, gender parity (of access and of retention) and literacy and numeracy scores.

The second, the infrastructure score, is a weighted average of aggregate district level averages for the existence of school facilities, such as electricity, running water, functional toilets and boundary walls.