How can education for adolescent girls be improved? This report draws on research on over 300 past and current programmes and projects. It provides new evidence on how proven practices, such as curricula relevant for adolescent girls, scholarships, and the recruitment and training of female teachers, can increase the number of adolescent girls attending school. It also outlines three developmental and learning phases during adolescence, with associated learning goals and preferred educational pathways for girls.
The majority of girls now attend primary schools, and most girls attend school into early adolescence. But girls’ primary school completion rates are below 50 percent in most poor countries. Fewer girls attend formal education in later adolescence and, of those who do, many are in formal primary rather than secondary school. The fact that the majority of donor funding is directed toward girls’ primary school attendance may contribute to this pattern. In addition, skill development and knowledge acquisition vary enormously by grade level, both within and across countries, due to variations in school quality.
Education for adolescents can be transformative. Many benefits are immediate. The prospect of secondary education motivates girls to complete primary school. Being in school along with boys during adolescence fosters greater gender equality in the daily lives of adolescents. Education for adolescent girls helps them avoid long working hours and early pregnancies, and lowers their risk of HIV/AIDS. In the long term, secondary education offers greater prospects of remunerative employment.
However, relatively few programmes are specifically designed with the developmental and learning needs of adolescent girls in mind. Rather, the evidence suggests that adolescent girls are often subsumed under programmes for younger girls or adult women.
There has been a notable rise in the number of non-formal educational programmes with girl-friendly features. But, while evidence suggests that enrolment in non-formal institutions is significant among adolescents and that many girls move between formal and non-formal education, little is known about their coverage and impact.
Continuing education during adolescence is a necessary first step for girls to overcome a history of disadvantage in civic life and paid employment. The report recommends ten key actions that can help to improve adolescent girls’ education:
- Collect and compile data on non-formal education national household surveys and censuses
- Build and maintain a global database of education programmes for adolescent girls in order to identify promising models appropriate to girls’ educational needs in different settings.
- Expand opportunities for girls to attend secondary school: define basic education as education through lower secondary school, or to age 16, and offer subsidies to disadvantaged girls to attend public or private secondary schools
- Support the non-formal education system, including via upgrading, certification, and licensing, and establish pathways from the non-formal to the formal sector
- Develop after-school tutoring and mentoring programmes in both primary and secondary schools
- Produce curricula relevant to adolescent girls that include remunerative and marketable skills, develop critical thinking and decisionmaking skills and that encourage lifelong learning
- Offer post-secondary vocational programmes that are based on market analysis and that provide relevant, flexible skills for employment and professional growth in the global economy.
- Provide training and ongoing incentives for women to enter and remain in teaching
- Promote easy transitions between non-formal and formal schools
- Encourage and evaluate innovation through pilot projects and research/programme partnerships.
In addition, complementary social efforts will be required to open previously closed pathways for girls. These efforts include a supportive legal environment that fully recognises the equal rights of girls and women and enshrines those rights in law and practice.
