Today, on the International Day of the Girl Child, GPE is releasing its first policy brief on its work to support gender equality, with an invitation to all our partners to reflect on the 61 million girls out of school around the world.
It is a human right of every girl and every boy to go to school and learn.
We know that educating girls is beneficial not only for the individual, but also for economic growth, health, nutrition, and agricultural productivity. Sending girls to school is good for families, communities, and nations.
The 2016 Gender Review recently released by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report team paints a troubling picture, though, showing that we have a long way to go to reach gender equality in education -- particularly in low-income and lower-middle-income countries.
In the most difficult contexts, girls are often left behind and a girl is more than twice as likely to be out of school if she lives in a country affected by conflict.
How GPE works for gender equality and girls’ education
With GPE’s help, the number of out-of-school girls in partner developing countries was reduced by 9.3 million since 2002 and more girls complete primary and lower secondary school.
In that time, the number of girls completing school for every 100 boys has risen from 83 to 94 for primary, and from 86 to 91 for lower secondary in GPE partner countries.
GPE’s new policy brief outlines how the partnership works to advance gender equality in education across our partner developing countries. GPE’s operational model does this by locking together three core strategies at the country level:
- Stronger sector planning
- Mutual accountability and inclusive policy dialogue
- Effective financing for implementation of sector plans
- School construction and upgrading in areas where there are not enough schools that girls can attend
- Recruitment of female teachers, particularly in countries where cultural norms require female-only school environments for girls
- In-service teacher training in gender-responsiveness
- Encouragement of women in administrative leadership
- Separate latrines and/or sanitary kits for girls
- Uniforms and school kits to reduce direct costs of schooling
- Cash transfers incentivizing girls to attend and remain in school, and/or rewarding high achievers
- Awareness-raising campaigns and community discussion groups to address sociocultural factors
- National studies to help develop targeted gender strategies.
GPE helps partner developing countries to make stronger sector plans through grants that support education sector analysis and plan development, as well as through technical support.
GPE also invests in global public goods that give countries the tools they need to engage in better analysis and planning. For example, grants through the Global and Regional Activities program have helped to fund the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children and a project on addressing school-related gender-based violence.
GPE, together with the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) will soon be releasing a Guidance for Developing Gender-Responsive Education Sector Plans, which provides case studies and recommendations to help policymakers understand and apply the core principles of gender equality to education sector planning.
In supporting inclusive policy dialogue, GPE encourages the representation of diverse voices so that policies are more likely to be rooted in local concerns and address locally relevant issues regarding the most disadvantaged children.
Civil society organizations can be powerful advocates for girls’ education at the country level, and including them is particularly important for strong mutual accountability. With this in mind, GPE has allocated US$29 million to the Civil Society Education Fund (CSEF), which is managed by our partner, the Global Campaign for Education.
The CSEF gives grants to 62 national civil society coalitions to support their advocacy activities, build their capacity to strengthen planning, implementation and impact, and promote cross-country learning and networking.
GPE partner countries can receive grants of up to US$100 million to finance a program that supports the implementation of their education sector plan. GPE’s results-based funding model incentivizes partner developing countries to improve equity, efficiency, and learning in their education sectors.
Activities currently funded by GPE grants include:
Priorities moving forward
Achieving gender equality is one of GPE’s eight principles guiding its current strategic plan and our Gender Equality Policy and Strategy 2016-2020 lays out key priorities for action, including a focus on building capacity throughout the partnership to advance gender equality, and investigating opportunities for more collaboration with other sectors, such as health, water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Join us for more
Tomorrow, GPE is participating in a webinar on Promoting Gender Equality in Education, hosted by UNESCO’s International Institute for Education Planning.
At the webinar I will be presenting on GPE’s support to gender equality through the GPE 2020 strategic plan as well as through our new Gender Equality Policy and Strategy, and I encourage you to join us.
On October 18, Nora Fyles, Head of the UNGEI Secretariat, will be presenting on the UNGEI-GPE Guidance for Developing Gender-Responsive Education Sector Plans.
Getting more girls in school and learning, and working toward greater gender equality in and through education, are of critical importance. This work is indispensable for delivering on the broader sustainable development agenda.