5) A global initiative for the education goals

Aid not only needs to be increased, it needs to be intelligently targeted towards countries that face the greatest numerical and financial challenges in attaining the 2005 and 2015 goals, and whose
Governments show real and demonstrated commitment to redressing gender inequalities. Firm, long-term financial aid is required in order for governments to be able to commit external resources to meet salary costs and other recurrent expenditures. The Global Campaign for Education is calling for the implementation of a global financing framework for basic education, in order to channel increased aid to the countries that are most in need of additional
Resources and have good policies in place for meeting the 2005 and 2015 education goals. The Fast Track Initiative (FTI), endorsed last year by the G7 leaders, the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF, provides a starting point. The FTI could be enormously helpful in accelerating progress towards the 2005 and 2015 targets, by guaranteeing the long-term predictable financing that governments need in order to provide free and universal access, and to
Achieve minimum quality levels in all schools. However, the FTI’s impact on the 2005 goal will be limited unless it includes funding for subsidy programmes to get girls into school. Donors must
Also agree a timetable for expanding FTI entry to more countries, including those with the most out-of-school girls and largest gender gaps.

We know what needs to be done to provide all girls with their right to a basic education; we know what it will cost. We also know what a high price there is to be paid for failure. We must now mobilise this ambition and all the available resources to implement and achieve what we know to be right.

“I didn’t go to school because I had so much work at home. Here at school, I am learning so much. I am learning to think well of myself. I want to become a teacher, so that I can make others feel like me now.”
– SANGEETA, 16, INDIA.

Notes
1 Bicego G., and O. Ahmad 1996, Infant and Child Mortality, Demographic and Health
Surveys Comparative Studies no. 20. Calverton, Maryland: Macro International Inc.
2 World Bank 2002, HIV-AIDS and Education: A window of hope. Washington, D.C.: World
Bank.
3 Smith, L. C., and L. Haddad 2000, Explaining Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries: A
Cross Country Analysis. IFPRI Research Report. No.111. Washington, D.C.: International
Food Policy Research Institute.
4 Coombe, C., and M. Kelly 2001, ‘Education as a Vehicle for Combating HIV/AIDS.’
UNESCO Prospects XXXI (3): pp.435-45.
5 Vandemoortele, J. 2002, ‘Are the MDGs Feasible?’, UNDP Bureau for Development Policy,
processed July.
6 UNDP and UNICEF 2002, The Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Report prepared in
June at the request of the G8 Personal Representatives for Africa.
7 Vandemoortele, op. cit.
8 UNESCO 2002, Global EFA Monitoring Report. New York: UNESCO.
9 World Bank 2002, A Chance for Every Child. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.
MEDIA BRIEF
A Fair Chance
ATTAINING GENDER EQUALITY IN BASIC EDUCATION BY 2005
Global Campaign for Education
www.campaignforeducation.org
APRIL 2003
65 million girls are missing
Getting girls into school means the difference between life and death for millions. Babies born to mothers without formal education are at least twice as likely to suffer from malnutrition, or die before the age of five, than those babies born to mothers who completed primary school.1 Even one or two years of schooling for mothers cuts child deaths by 15 per cent.2 Women’s education does more to reduce malnutrition than anything else, including increased food availability.3 It is one of the most
Effective ways to fight the spread of HIV-AIDS.4

Yet 65 million girls are being denied their right to education. That’s as many as all of the school-age girls in North America and Europe. And far too little is being done about it. At the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders agreed to get as many girls as boys do into primary and secondary classrooms by 2005. Governments also promised to ensure that by 2015, all girls and boys complete primary education. The UN itself acknowledges that without success on the education goals, there is little prospect of achieving the other Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for halving poverty by 2015. Yet, on current trends, girls’ enrolment won’t catch up with boys’ until 2025.5 and unless progress is accelerated, Africa won’t get all of its girls and boys into primary school until 2100.6
Some 88 countries need to dramatically accelerate progress for the 2005 target to be met. Clearly, a massive effort will be needed in order to avoid an outright failure. Yet even though 2005 is less than two years away, no country is so far off track that it cannot eliminate gender gaps in rural and urban primary and secondary school intake rates by 2005. The next challenge is to ensure that completion rates between boys and girls are equalised by 2010. Eliminating gender gaps in rural and urban primary school intake is a minimum threshold that must be achieved by 2005. If this timeline is allowed to slip, it will become impossible to achieve universal primary education (UPE) by 2015. And, as UNDP has warned, if we fail to achieve UPE by 2015, the already uncertain prospects of attaining the other MDGs will dwindle beyond the vanishing point.7 But some countries, including a few of the poorest in the world, are already making the required effort – and winning. Bangladesh, for example, has raised girls’ secondary enrolment rate from 13 per cent to 56 per cent in 10 years.8 New research by the GCE analyses the factors behind their success. The study shows that girls’ enrolments could grow at the rate required to reach the targets, if all poor countries made basic education free and introduced targeted programmes to help girls in the poorest families and schools; and if all rich countries kept their promise to increase their aid to education.

A primer for action
Achieving gender equality throughout the education and training system must be accorded the highest priority. It should therefore be a central plank of the manifesto of every political party, a key goal in donor Country Assistance Strategies and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, and the top priority for every Minister of Education. Clear, time-bound targets must be backed up by the necessary commitment of resources and proper management systems with the power and authority to ensure that every education manager, right through to every classroom teacher, takes the gender targets very seriously.
2
A Fair Chance

ATTAINING GENDER EQUALITY IN BASIC EDUCATION BY 2005
A comprehensive strategy for achieving gender equality in education should include the following actions by governments and donors:

1) End the education queue
There are only a few developing countries in which affluent males have not already achieved universal primary education. There are only a few developing countries in which poor, rural girls are even close to achieving the same. In India, for example, nearly a third of rural girls have never been to school, and in Ethiopia, the figure climbs to almost two-thirds. Gender gaps are often greatest in countries where overall net enrolments are low. By failing to increase access so that there are enough free school places to accommodate all of the boys and all of the girls, governments create an education queue in which the poorest and least privileged groups, including girls, are almost certain to come last. The following steps are needed to get rid of this queue: _ Build enough schools and hire enough teachers to guarantee that all communities are served by a school within safe walking distance for girls. _ Remove school fees, which guarantee the continuing exclusion of poor rural girls. When parents can only afford to keep one child in school, daughters usually lose out. By contrast, in Uganda,
Following the introduction of free primary education, the number of girls enrolled increased from 1.4 million in 1996, to 3 million in 1999, and girls’ share in total enrolment has steadily grown. _ Expand ‘bridging’ schemes developed by NGOs to attract hard-to-reach children into the school system.
_ To avoid recreating the queue at secondary level, governments must plan to rapidly extend free and universal access to secondary schools. Currently, only one in five girls in Africa and two in five girls
In South and West Asia, get the chance to go to secondary school.

2) Offer extra help for poor families to keep girls in school

Extra assistance, such as a free school meal, or stipends linked to regular attendance, helps poor families keep girls in school for longer. It is also an inexpensive and effective way to redistribute resources towards poor communities, since a relatively small upfront investment by governments enables poor girls to acquire a lifelong asset that allows them to escape the poverty trap. In Bangladesh, districts where secondary school bursaries were introduced experienced a sharp decrease in child marriages, as well as soaring girls’ enrolments.

3) Launch a rescue plan for schools in poor communities

Parents withdraw girls from school if they perceive that their daughters are not learning anything; or worse, that they are vulnerable to abuse, attack and humiliation on school grounds. Yet many schools in poor, rural areas (and urban slums) lack even the basics needed to function. They frequently have far fewer resources, offer fewer hours of instruction, and attain far worse results, than schools in more
Affluent areas. All schools need a trained, motivated teacher who turns up every day to teach, and enough books and desks to go around. Construction of safe and private toilet facilities for girls should be mandatory. Strong sanctions against the sexual abuse and harassment of girl pupils must be enacted
And enforced. A first priority should be improving the status, pay and support of teachers, especially those teachers posted to rural or ‘difficult’ areas.

4) Invest more in girls
Countries that have achieved success in girls’ schooling are ones that have dramatically increased their own spending on basic education to as much as 20 per cent of their budget, or 3 per cent of their GDP. Yet even at this high level of government commitment, low-income countries will still need a substantial increase in aid and debt relief. To meet 3

GCE South Africa

Although it may appear that the enrolment situation in South Africa is not as bad as the rest of the world. The main concern is the out come of the gender differences than the enrolment issue. One of the main problems that have been identified as the contributing factor is that South Africa has a high teenage pregnancy rate which interrupts the girls education. After giving birth many girls don’t go back to school. This is just one of the reasons for the high drop out rate of girls. This issue is being investigated further.

GCE is an initiative to highlight such problems in the country along with other issue such as
Free education and other issues. This years campaign is highlighting the main concerns that the people of South Africa are facing concerning their girl children hence this years slogan: “ hands up for girls’ education”