Solutions Panorama

Keeping Girls
in School
Featuring
Bicycle Programme, Bihar,
India; Ishraq program, Egypt;
Girls Scholarship Programme,
Cameroon
Where:
Global, with examples in India,
Egypt, and Cameroon
Time Frame:
Various
SUMMARY
Child marriage and education are closely linked. Girls who lack access to formal education (e.g. no transportation to
reach school, lack of facilities, cost prohibitive school fees, etc.) are three times more likely to be child brides than
those with secondary or higher education. Child marriage often leads to school dropout and undermines efforts to
improve girls’ education. It is crucial to invest in safe, quality education for girls to prevent child marriage and to
support married girls.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Educated girls are much less likely to marry as children
and more likely to acquire the necessary knowledge
and skills to help them reach their full potential.
Educated girls are better able to make informed
decisions – including if, when, and whom to marry.
Being in school also supports the perception that girls
are still children, and are therefore not of a suitable
age to marry. Investing in girls’ education and delaying
the age of marriage also helps break the cycle of
poverty by increasing future economic opportunities
for girls, who can then invest in their families and
communities, helping to lift them out of poverty. In
fact, each additional year of education can boost a
woman’s wages by 10 to 20 percent.
domestic work). Schools also need to address the
specific needs of girls who are married.
Getting girls into a classroom is just the first step. They
must be offered quality education that includes gender
sensitive materials and curricula to help develop the
knowledge and life skills needed to make free and
informed decisions, including if, when, and whom to
marry. Comprehensive sexual and reproductive health
education that explicitly addresses gender inequality
can also transform harmful social norms that
perpetuate child marriage.
Girls must be able to travel safely to school and be
safe while attending school – sanitation facilities
and gender-based violence must be addressed to
increase girls’ enrollment. The direct and indirect cost
of education must be reduced for girls to access and
remain in school (either financial costs or opportunity
cost, e.g. time that could have been spent doing
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