May 2014: As a follow up to the launch of the 2nd Alif Ailaan Pakistan district education rankings, Saman Naz (a colleague from Alif Ailaan) and I went back to the rankings data and tested the hypothesis that improved school infrastructure (based on the infrastructure score from the rankings) could be associated with improved educational outcomes (based on the education score).

Our findings were published in UNDP Pakistan’s quarterly, The Development Advocate, Vol.1, Issue 2. We found that there is a significant positive correlation between school facilities and educational outcomes. However, it is not a strong correlation.