New report shows that poor girls are last in line for quality education
Hard data is essential to understanding what forces girls out of school and how we can develop solutions.
When world leaders came together in Senegal last month to discuss education, the most powerful speech didn’t come from a president or prime minister. It came from 15-year-old Nigerian student and education activist, Peace Ayo.
Peace attended the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) conference on behalf of Malala Fund to advocate for every girl’s right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. During her remarks, Peace described what she sees in her Nigerian community every day — girls labouring at construction sites to pay their school tuition fees and girls forced out of the classroom due to unplanned pregnancies or early marriages.
Her words reflect the harsh reality for many girls struggling to go to school. More than 130 million girls will be denied an education today.
In partnership with the United Nations, today Malala Fund launched a new report, Meeting our commitments to gender equality in education. The report reveals what girls like Peace know firsthand: the most marginalised girls are the most likely to be left behind by the system.
The report’s findings include:
- In 20 countries, girls can legally be forced into child marriage;
- A poor girl in a poor country has just a 2% chance of receiving 12 years of education;
- In Nigeria, only 75 girls for every 100 boys complete secondary school; and
- 63% of illiterate adults are women.
Research like this is important because it helps us understand the scale of the problem and develop solutions. The biggest barriers to girls getting to school are availability and cost. There simply aren’t schools close to girls or school expenses are too much for parents to afford.
Once girls are in the school, they enter a system that doesn’t support them. Inadequate toilet facilities force girls to miss school while menstruating. Schools reinforce gender stereotypes with outdated textbooks, untrained teachers and a lack of women in senior roles. And too often female students face harassment and abuse. Governments must address these barriers or they risk losing another generation of girls.
As this new report shows, governments have a long way to go. I hope that policy-makers and politicians remember that behind these statistics are the real experiences of girls like Peace. As she said at the GPE conference, “If we want great nations — if we want a great world — we must educate girls.”
In partnership with the United Nations, Malala Fund launched Meeting our commitments to gender equality in education, an annual review of progress on global commitments to gender equality in education. Read the report here.
