Balochistan Strengthening Budget Management to Improve Education Service Delivery

Improving educational access and outcomes helps reduce poverty through its links to other development challenges such as health, economic empowerment, and peace building. The role of public financial management (PFM) as a contributory factor in improving service delivery is receiving greater attention in literature. Although PFM alone does not have a direct link (Welham, Krause, Hedger 2013) to improved service delivery, robust PFM can provide an enabling environment for improving service delivery and promoting economic growth. This report acknowledges that PFM and other factors influence the quality of service delivery. It also makes a case for how in Balochistan the enhanced budget management can contribute to improving service delivery in the education sector. It is important to note that Pakistan has a single PFM system at the federal as well as the provincial levels while main responsibility lies with the federal government. The Controller General of Accounts (CGA) is the custodian of the country information management system. The CGA transacts payments and carries out bookkeeping, on behalf of all the levels of governments through its network of offices across the whole country. The audited reports are presented to the respective Public Accounts Committee of the federal and provincial governments. In Balochistan, progress in educational access was noted, but serious challenges remain in the inclusiveness, retention, and learning outcomes. Responding to these challenges, the Balochistan Education Sector Plan (BESP) supports actions in five areas: improving quality education, access and equity, higher education, alternate learning pathways, and governance and management. Implementing this plan requires more and better use of resources, but the pathway for this in the plan is not clear. This review seeks to complement the plan by evaluating the effectiveness of public finance in education in Balochistan. It analyzes government expenditures mainly over the period FY12–FY16 to judge whether spending is consistent with policy priorities, to determine what results were achieved, and to suggest the next steps. By better understanding these issues, the government and its development partners can assess the effectiveness of budget planning and execution, and the impact on further investment. The review should help authorities to diagnose spending problems and to move toward more effective and transparent budget allocations and spending. The goal is to get a baseline understanding of key policy and management challenges and to set forth priority reform areas and an agenda for moving forward.Balochistan is among the most challenging contexts one can imagine for improving educational outcomes. This review assumes that there was an appropriate process used in designing the BESP and that its analysis and recommendations are accepted by key stakeholders as the basis for going forward, are correctly prioritized, and are practical given the context. This review only addresses the PFM aspects implied by the program. Addressing key PFM challenges will not, by itself, improve education in Balochistan, but only as part of the wide range of actions supported by the BESP. There are also process issues that go beyond PFM that are also crucial to address, but are not covered in detail here. For example, there are a range of motivational problems affecting civil servants and teachers, and the need for seeking authorization for teamwork with highly varied functional roles and skill sets and for allowing solutions to emerge from trial and error. These issues will need to be addressed going forward to have greater assurance of achieving the envisioned improvements in education.