Education Conditional Cash Transfers are an important pillar of Ehsaas and are included in the Ehsaas framework as Policy #73 ‘Education Conditional Cash Transfers’. Education Conditional Cash Transfers serve the dual purpose of socially assisting vulnerable households and at the same time reduce the number of out of school children, which is an important outcome for Pakistan given that there are 19.1 million out-of-school children in the country.

Pakistan had been running an Education Conditional Cash Transfer for primary school going children called Waseela-e-Taleem since 2012 in selected districts. Many studies were conducted on this programme. Meta-analysis conducted in 2019 showed a positive impact on enrollment but the impact on attendance and learning outcomes was not remarkable. Insights were used to design Ehsaas School Stipends.

In the past, the programme encountered a number of challenges namely high administrative cost, weak compliance monitoring system, low stipend amount and high error and fraud due to a paper-based approach. Over the last year and a half, a comprehensive and deep-rooted reform was designed and deployed as a result of which far reaching changes have been made in the program. There were four key pillars of reform:

First, end-to-end digitization of a number of processes, which were previously managed manually. Apps have been developed which are used by staff to register children and monitor compliance. Secondly, cost-effective changes to institutional infrastructure were developed to expand this program nationwide and reliance on NGOs was eliminated. Because of this, operational cost has been reduced from 8% to 3%. Third, the stipend given to children has been modified as per Ehsaas’ new Stipend policy. The programme includes primary, secondary and higher secondary school stipends. Children aged 4 to 22 years from all Ehsaas eligible families can enroll for the school stipends.

Primary school going boys get a quarterly stipend of Rs. 1,500 and girls Rs. 2,000; secondary school boys receive Rs. 2,500 and girls Rs. 3,000; and at higher secondary level, boys get Rs. 3,500 and girls Rs. 4,000. The Ehsaas School Stipends programme with higher incentive for girls, has been designed to encourage parents to send their children particularly girls to schools. Ehsaas also introduced a one-time graduation bonus of Rs. 3,000 to encourage girls to complete primary education. This award is being given to girl students completing Grade 5 from Ehsaas eligible families.

To checkmate abuse, the programme has been made end-to-end digital. All payments are made to mothers of children. Disbursements are linked to the 70% school/college attendance.

A specialized Ehsaas Taleemi Wazaif app has also been developed for eligible families to facilitate them to enroll their children at the doorstep without visiting any office.  

Eligible families can also reach out to tehsil offices of Ehsaas all over the country to enroll their children. Ehsaas School Stipends programme has the target to support 10 million children in all 160 districts. To-date, over 7.87 million children have been enrolled in the programme.