'These scholarships elevate the socio-economic status of the entire family and successive generations,' says CEO-Punjab Educational Endowment Fund

BR Research recently had the pleasure to sit down with Dr Kamran Shams, CEO of the Punjab Educational Endowment Fund (PEEF) and discuss the performance of the fund so far. Dr Kamran has been doing some wonderful work in providing scholarships to the under-privileged and financially challenged students in Punjab. The performance of PEEF is a testament to his dedication and belief in the cause of providing education to the less fortunate. He has previously served the Civil Services of Pakistan for over 15 years, has worked as the head of HR-Retail Banking Group for Habib Bank and also provides consultancy to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
BR Research: Please tell us a bit about yourself and the Punjab Educational Endowment Fund (PEEF)
Dr Kamran Shams: I have had a very diverse and varied background. By education I am a doctor and I graduated from King Edward Medical College. Later on, I joined the civil services and after serving for 15 years I resigned. After leaving I started Akhuwat with Dr Amjad Saqib and I was one of the founding directors. I also joined the private sector, and my exposure was mostly pertaining to human resource management. In February 2009, I joined as the CEO of PEEF and the rest as they say is history.
PEEF is an initiative of the Government of Punjab under the leadership of the Chief Minister, Mr Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif. PEEF is registered under section 42 of the Companies Ordinance, 1984 which allows us to operate us an autonomous body and reduces the hassle of the usual bureaucratic red tape.
This program's objective is to build an institution to financially support the education of under-privileged children. Our aim is to provide scholarships to talented and needy students for pursuing quality education with equal opportunities. The philosophy behind the initiative was to build a mechanism where the students do not have to apply for a scholarship. In other words, the government should go to the student rather than the student coming to the government.
BRR: Could you define the methodology behind the selection of the scholarship recipients and the challenges you have been faced with during the process?
DKS: Firstly, when we say we want to provide scholarships to "needy" students the first challenge is to identify and define needy. This is one of the biggest challenges because need is a relative phenomenon. For example, if someone is earning Rs 15000 and he has one child, whereas there is another person who is making Rs 17000 but has six children who do you think is needier. In monetary terms, obviously the first one but from a subjective point of view it will be the second one. But the issue is we cannot become subjective. So, the first challenge is how to identify who is needy.
The second challenge is how to approach our beneficiaries. Obviously if we were to advertise that we are giving out scholarships to needy students we would at least get a million applications. Now sifting through those applications and processing them would involve a huge amount of resources and manpower. In the previous year, we have given 70,000 scholarships, which mean that there are an equal number of satisfied customers. Had we first received one million applications and then chosen 70000 from them, the number of unsatisfied customers would be huge so the public perception about the government remains positive regarding the program so far.
So, we decided to develop a mechanism where we can address all these challenges for which we created certain proxies to identify needy students. The proxies were such that they were already available in some database because if we were to start gathering our own data, it would undermine our main focus of awarding scholarships. It is beyond the scope of this organisation to determine or verify someone's income.
The first proxy we developed was that those students who are studying in government or fee exempt institutions fall into the needy bracket. According to statistics sixty percent of the population is going to public sector schools, whereas the remaining attends private institutions. Some other examples of proxies we made were employees in Grade 1-4 government employees whose income level is quite low and who definitely fall in the needy category. There are also special quotas for orphans, children of BPS1-4 government, employees, disabled persons, minorities as well as widows.
After creating proxies, we then approached the educational boards such as BISE and institutions such as the Punjab Education Commission and made use of their databases. We filter students according to our proxies from the data as well as by geographical location from district level down to individual tehsils. We create a merit in descending order, and according to the funding we have available for that specific region we award a certain number of scholarships. The recipients are notified through an official letter along with a form requesting them to take admission by their choice. This process has resulted in the avoidance of bureaucratic red tape, making it extremely easy and simple for the beneficiaries to avail the scholarships.
The second benefit is the government engaging directly, which instils confidence in the government's ability to do things on merit. Initially, the reaction by people was of shock and they called us to verify if it was real or too good to be true.
Even though the process looks very simple, it requires a lot of effort considering the wide variety of variables involved. For example, just take one district, Rajanpur and create its matriculation merit. There are three fields of study and two genders, which means six different merits just for one district. And that is just for matriculation, whereas in intermediate there are even more fields of study so the calculation is very large. But we have now procured advanced software to carry out the analysis, which has made our work easier.
BRR: How much financial assistance can students expect from PEEF? Also, what is the proportion given to each field of study?
DKS: The amounts can differ depending on the city and institution they are going to attend; so, if someone is going to study in Lahore, for example, he will get an extra allowance to adjust for the increase in cost of living. All our scholarships are generally based on a range, which is calculated based on the cost of attendance of a public educational institution. However, we have created a list of institutions called centres of excellence, which include LUMS, IBA, NUST, GIKI etc. For students who attend these institutions the stipend rates are different. In addition, we also collaborate with these institutions through MOU's that enable a cost sharing mechanism.
Eighty percent of the scholarships go to sciences and the remaining twenty percent for social sciences and arts. Fifty percent of the total scholarships go to girls and fifty percent goes to boys. Then we have divided the quota equally amongst all districts. However, the less developed districts have been given a higher weightage in the quota as there are more underprivileged students in those areas.
BRR: Can you please tell us a bit about the investment criteria that PEEF adheres to?
DKS: The Punjab Finance department has issued certain instructions and guidelines for our endowment to follow that requires the majority of our investments in term deposits (TDRs). We take rates from the five biggest banks and take the highest rate to the Bank of Punjab, which then matches it. In case it cannot, we are free to invest with the bank that is offering us the highest rate. As this is public money, we are extremely careful about our investments and ensure no risk, which is why we prefer a government bank.
BRR: What is the number of scholarships that you have processed so far? Also, what sort of impacts have you witnessed on the scholarship recipients so far?
DKS: We have given 150, 000 scholarships till now. The government increased its allocation from the original Rs 2 billion to Rs 2 billion-every year. Now given the exemplary performance of the fund, the government decided to increase the allocation to Rs 4 billion each year. By the end of June 2017, we will have awarded another 50,000 scholarships bringing our total tally to 200,000 scholarships. Currently our total endowment is worth Rs 16 billion whereas the total amount disbursed in terms of scholarships is approximately Rs 11.5 billion.
Out of all these scholarships that have been awarded there is not a single person that has not been selected on the basis of merit. The credit goes to the Chief Minister, Mr Shahbaz Sharif, for his unwavering commitment in ensuring transparency in this initiative.
The kind of change that PEEF is bringing about is transforming the lives of whole families and generations. For example, the sons of tea stall owners and cotton pickers have become doctors and engineers. There are cases where children of extremely underprivileged minorities have graduated from the leading universities of the country and are serving in various reputable institutions.
There are stories and incidents which can certainly bring tears to the eye. Getting scholarships enabled the whole family of the recipient to elevate both in terms of socio-economic status and from an educational point of view as well, which is remarkable.