Alif Ailaan


Alif Ailaan was a nonprofit organization working in the field of education in Pakistan from 2013 to 2018. Launched by a team of media and communications specialists, the program aimed to prioritize education in Pakistan and raise awareness among the masses about the importance of education.
It ran campaigns in print, on radio and television, and on social media for the awareness of the masses about education. The program conducts seminars and surveys and publishes the highly-cited district education rankings report. It also monitored the performance of parliamentarians in reforming education in their constituencies.
Working in the four provinces of Pakistan as well as Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, and the formerly Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Alif Ailaan identified the weak spots in education through research and aimed to assist decision makers in creating and implementing better education policies.

Contributions

Alif Ailaan addressed the educational crisis in Pakistan and suggested measures to reform the education landscape. Through their research and data compilation, they assisted decision makers to come up with. Funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, the organization also provided grant support to civil society organisations working for educational reforms and fund research on issues related to education in Pakistan.

District Education Rankings

Alif Ailaan also released annual District Education Rankings for all districts of Pakistan on the basis of its research. The research examined the state of education in the country's 148 districts and agencies and identified the weak spots in education.

2013

According to District Education Rankings 2013, Punjab and Balochistan were the top and bottom-ranked provinces respectively. Poonch was the highest-ranked district in the country, scoring 82.94 points out of a maximum of 100. No districts of the Sindh could find a place among top 50, while only98 our of the total 145 districts scored above 50.
RankDistrictProvince
1PoonchAzad Kashmir
2IslamabadIslamabad Capital Territory
3ChakwalPunjab
4SialkotPunjab
5RawalpindiPunjab
6JhelumPunjab
7NarowalPunjab
8LahorePunjab
9Hunza–NagarGilgit-Baltistan
10HaripurKhyber Pakhtunkhwa

RankProvinceScore
1Punjab83.47
2Sindh66.70
3Khyber Pakhtunkhwa66.18
4Federally Administered Tribal Areas35.17
5Balochistan26.61
6Gilgit-Baltistan26.22
7Azad Kashmir23.60

2014

The 2014 District Education Rankings of 146 districts of Pakistan showed that Islamabad was the best-performing region in terms of overall standards of education, followed by districts of Punjab and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

2015

The 2015 District Education Ranking showed poor performance of Sindh while the performance of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for improving its enrollment, retention and gender parity indicators was lauded. Rawalpindi District was on top of the ranking.

Performance of parliamentarians in education sector

Alif Ailaan also gauged the performance of every Member of the National Assembly on the basis of educational performance in their respective constituencies. They were assessed against four indicators for education – gender parity, physical facilities, student–teacher ratio and retention.