Reproducibility package for Where Are Pakistan’s Out-Of-School Children? Mapping Accessibility Of Schooling Using Satellite Data And Machine Learning Methods With An Application To The 2022 Floods

According to administrative data, as many as 25 million children between the ages of 5 and 16 are out-of-school in Pakistan. However, little is known about where these children are in relation to available public and private schooling options. This paper brings together novel data from satellite imagery, the population census, government school censuses of public schools and publicly available location data on private schools to understand the out-of-school phenomenon at the community level. The paper uses satellite imagery analysis and machine learning methods to present estimates of the accessibility of schools and to describe the white space between schools. The paper relies on administrative data from over 137,000 public schools and documents the existence of over 72,700 private schools using publicly available location data. Our approach suggests that 21.7 million children (49% of the total) are enrolled in private schools, higher than previously reported official estimates. We also present detailed data on how the out-of-school population, accessibility and whitespace are distributed geo-spatially across Pakistan. As an application of the strength of using satellite imagery, we also analyze the effect of a major flood event in 2022 on accessibility, white space and catchment areas. Doing so, we estimate that approximately 3.5 million children in Pakistan had their schooling affected by the 2022 floods. Lastly, we corroborate our findings from an in-person ground-truthing survey conducted about 18 months after the floods. Together, the datasets and methods presented in this paper have applications for both day-to-day monitoring of school infrastructure as well as pre- and post-disaster planning efforts in Pakistan and elsewhere.