A fair chance - United Nations Girls' Education Initiative

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Work (Ethiopia), Vimila Ramachandran (India),Felicia Onibon (Nigeria), Linda Semu (Malawi), MariaKeita and Debby Fredo (Mali), Saloni Singh (Nepal),Seema Pervez (Pakistan).Report structureChapter 1 assesses the current size of the gender gaps,focusing in particular on the current situation in thenine case study countries. It also reviews the progressmade since the Jomtien Conference in 1990 when thefirst set of EFA goals were first promulgated.Chapter 2 looks at the main reasons why so manyfewer girls than boys attend school, and why theyoften do less well in terms of key learning outcomes.It explores the multiple economic, social, and culturalobstacles facing girls who want to go to school.Chapter 3 reviews what governments and NGOssupported by donor partners have done to close thegap.Chapter 4 focuses on the size of the challenge, andwhat needs to be done by governments, NGOs, anddonors to attain the gender equality goals by 2005.Chapter 5 presents a set of recommendations atvarious levels, in the conviction that ambitious andcoordinated interventions give a fair chance to girlsand boys, as well as the opportunity to release thepromise that education offers for all.6
1. How big are the Education Gender Gaps?Accurately assessing the extent of gender inequality inprimary and secondary education in developingcountries is clearly crucial. However, this is not aneasy task because the quality and coverage of theavailable statistics is so poor in many countries. Thisis particularly the case for key performance indicatorssuch as pupil dropout and enrolment rates, and themost recent data is two to three years old. The overallquality of information collected throughquestionnaires from schools is notoriously poor.Other sources of data (household surveys, for example)can be used. However, efforts by government toimprove gender-disaggregated educationalmonitoring are a minimum indicator that politicalwill exists to tackle educational inequalities.UNESCO is working with Ministries of Education toimprove statistical capacity, but this will take time.The most recent year for which comprehensiveenrolment information is available is 2000. This isclearly unsatisfactory, especially because we know thatsubstantial progress towards achieving the genderenrolment parity goals has been made in manycountries during the last three years.The enormous gap between female and male literacyrates in much of Africa and South Asia is the moststriking consequence of the gender inequalities ineducation. Figure 2 presents these literacy rates forthe case study countries.Box 2: Gender inequality indicators for educationThere are three main aspects or dimensions to gender equality in education. The main focus of the gender inequality MDGsfor education is enrolment parity. Gender parity is achieved when the same proportion of girls and boys in the primary andsecondary school age groups are enrolled in school. The main indicator that is used to measure this is the difference or gapin female and male gross enrolment ratios (GER) for each education cycle. The female GER for primary education is thenumber of girls officially enrolled in primary school in a particular year expressed as a percentage of the total number of girlswho should be attending primary school. Another key enrolment parity indicator is the gap in female and male intake rates.The gross intake rate for boys, for example, is the number of boys actually enrolling in school in any one year expressed as apercentage of the total number of boys who should be beginning their primary schooling in that year. As a flow measure, theintake rate is particularly useful because it shows the extent to which gender equality is being achieved in recent years,whereas the GER gap measures the gender enrolment inequality over the entire education cycle (usually six years for primaryeducation).The second key aspect of gender equality in education concerns the extent to which girls have the same level of educationalattainment as boys, in terms of numbers of years, or grades of education, that have been completed. Total enrolments maybe the same for girls and boys, but if far fewer girls complete their primary or secondary education because they have muchhigher dropout and repetition rates, then it is clear that educational outcomes are not the same with respect to gender. Thereare three key indicators of educational attainment, namely the percentages of young people (15-19) who have never enrolledin school (the never-attenders), those who complete primary school, and those who complete some or all of the secondaryeducation cycle. Gender differences in school attendance are also very important. High rates of absenteeism obviously affectlearning and usually result in students dropping out.Actual learning outcomes is the third dimension of gender inequality. For many reasons, girls in the majority of developingcountries end up learning less than boys in school. However, there is usually very little information available that measureslearning outcomes with any degree of accuracy. Examination performance is an obvious indicator, but there are nointernational statistics collected for primary school leaving tests or secondary school terminal examinations.7
Page 1 and 2: ContentsIntroduction 2Report object
Page 3 and 4: Box 1: Education Can Save Your Life
Page 5: travel on their own. As Sukhiya Yad
Page 9 and 10: Table 1: GER gender gaps for primar
Page 11 and 12: than 20 percentage points) in 15 co
Page 13 and 14: Figure 5: Education attainment by g
Page 15 and 16: Table 3: GER gender gaps for primar
Page 17 and 18: Figure 8: Change in educational att
Page 19 and 20: 2. Why do fewer girls go to school?
Page 21 and 22: daughters to get a good enough educ
Page 23 and 24: Fees and charges for education have
Page 25 and 26: In Nepal, girls contribute at least
Page 27 and 28: fact that it is official policy tha
Page 29 and 30: 3. What has been done to close the
Page 31 and 32: However, international agencies cou
Page 33 and 34: Free primary education for allThe w
Page 35 and 36: Box 10: The Female Secondary School
Page 37 and 38: Ensuring girls’ safety anddignity
Page 39 and 40: Community schoolsThe emergence of v
Page 41 and 42: A number of other ‘alternative’
Page 43 and 44: 4. Beyond rhetoric:Making gender eq
Page 45 and 46: In Sub-Saharan Africa, the overall
Page 47 and 48: fewer resources, offer fewer hours
Page 49 and 50: governments to be able to commit ex
Page 51 and 52: Ilon, L. 1992. ‘Fitting girls’
Page 53 and 54: ANNEX 1Recommendations from the cou
Page 55 and 56: Ethiopia1.In order to reach the rur
Page 57 and 58:
4. Backward and forward linkages: I
Page 59 and 60:
(iv) It has been illustrated that s
Page 61 and 62:
women; legal rights counseling; HIV
Page 63 and 64:
Female teachers1.Increase the numbe
Page 65 and 66:
topics or subjects that will highli
Page 67 and 68:
ANNEX 2Additional tablesAnnex 2 tab
Page 69 and 70:
no schooling, no schooling, primary
Page 71 and 72:
Annex 2 table 4: Percentage change
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A fair chance - United Nations Girls' Education Initiative

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