Getting all girls into school

This paper discusses the gap between boys and girls attending school. It specifically looks at reasons why numbers of girls excluded from education are still high in spite of recent convergence between boy and girls attendance rates, and discusses various options of how to move forward in dealing with the problem.

The authors point to a UNESCO (2006) estimate that 43 million school-age girls are not enrolled in school. Many more complete fewer than six years of schooling, and a gap between boys and girls remains in some countries. This gap is due overwhelmingly to the lag in schooling of socially excluded groups, often minority groups that are on the margins of society.

Options put forward by the authors for dealing with the issue include:

• governments to improve the quality of schooling through a number of ways, such as making education policies more fair and expanding schooling options
• improve the physical environment and instructional materials. Girls are less likely to enrol, and more likely to drop out of schools in poor physical condition where teachers are often absent, and materials are inadequate
• create incentives for households to send girls to school. Evidence on what incentives might work is less clear and needs more focused evaluation
• lower-income countries cannot afford the extra efforts required to reach excluded groups and the out-of-school girls in those communities. For them, external support will be needed.