“The focus of this study is to investigate public private partnerships (PPPs) in education, in this instance by evaluating the Educational Management Organizations (EMOs) Program in Sindh, Pakistan. The study will be guided by the following overarching research questions: (1) To what extent, how, and for whom does the PPP mode of education through EMOs improve accessibility to education? (2) How effectively and efficiently do PPPs in education meet the objective of providing/delivering quality education? (3)To what extent and in what ways do PPPs in education address the issue of equity in education?

We have chosen the Realist Evaluation approach to answer the research questions and have adopted a mixed method research design. The data collection includes EMOs policy documents, SEMIS and SAT data sets, and students’ result sheets. Moreover, semi-structured interviews with the EMO stakeholders will also be conducted. In the data analysis, quantitatively the descriptive analysis and regression model of data sets will be analyzed to examine the SES, gender, and academic achievement differences before and after the EMOs program. Meanwhile, qualitatively the interview transcripts and document reviews will be coded in Context, Mechanism and Outcome (CMO) themes. CMO themes includes the descriptive objectives of the EMOs program, observed outcomes, context, and mechanism.

The study may provide an opportunity to policy makers to better understand what works, for whom, in what circumstances and in what respects, relative to these PPPs. Future research can be conducted by comparing EMOs and non-EMOs public schools in Sindh, Pakistan.”