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allAfrica.com: Ghana: 129 Girls Benefit From WFP Scholarship - 0 views

  • A total of 129 Senor High School girls, from the three Northern Regions, are to benefit from a GHc 74,000 scholarship scheme to guard against school drop-out. The World Food Programme and the Ghana Health Service Girls Project seek to support the less privileged girls, who attained the aggregate 06 to 16 in the 2010 Basic Education Certificate Examination.
  • As part of the programme she said, girls who attended school of a minimum of 85 percent of the month were rewarded with a take-home food package of cereal, vegetable oil and iodized salt.
  • "We at WFP are proud of the success of the girl child education programmes, but we are equally wary of challenges, including inadequate classroom, high teacher pupil ration, floods and drought, which could slow down the nation's quest to achieve MDG two," he said.
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How cycling set deprived Indian girls on a life-long journey | Bike blog | Environment ... - 0 views

  • In Bihar, one of India's poorest and most populous states, half of the women and a quarter of the men are illiterate, and about 90% of its 104 million inhabitants live in rural areas. Life here is particularly difficult for girls, and one of the greatest hindrances to their development is the simple journey to school. For many, the trip is long, expensive and dangerous.But here, in rural Bihar, we recently saw that a two-wheeled solution to the problem has been found.Three years ago the state's new chief minister Nitish Kumar adopted a "gender agenda" and set about redressing his state's endemic gender imbalances in an attempt to boost development in one of India's most backward states. His vision was to bring a sense of independence and purpose to his state's young women, and the flagship initiative of this agenda is the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojna, a project that gives schoolgirls 2,000 rupees (about £25) to purchase a bicycle.
  • 871,000 schoolgirls have taken to the saddle as a result of the scheme. The number of girls dropping out of school has fallen and the number of girls enrolling has risen from 160,000 in 2006-2007 to 490,000 now.
  • Girls like Pinki Kumari (15), a student from the high school in Desari, previously had 14km round trip each day. When she got back home, she would have to help her mother with daily chores. "At the end of the day, it became tiring and attending school became a ritual. I hardly got any time to study,"
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Non-availability of teachers Girls suffer as 50 schools closed in rural Peshawar | Paki... - 0 views

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    According to a source in the E&SE department, around 50 government girls' primary schools have been shut down in Peshawar, mostly in Matani, Badhber, Urmar, Garhi Atta Mohmmad and Adezai areas, due to unavailability of teachers, while many boys and girls primary schools faced shortage of teaching staff.
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UNGEI - Global Section - UNICEF Executive Director speaks out on girls' education and e... - 0 views

  • “The sad reality is that if our progress continues at its current pace, by 2015 there still will be approximately 56 million children out of school,” Mr. Lake said at the opening session of the E4 meeting. “And worse: You can count on those children being the hardest to reach, living in the poorest countries, with the highest and hardest barriers to overcome.”
  • • Children from the poorest 20 per cent of their societies, the so-called ‘fifth quintile’, are much less likely to attend primary school than those in the richest quintile • Girls in impoverished rural households are the most likely to be excluded from primary school • Children from indigenous and minority groups, as well as children with disabilities, are the least likely to be able to attend or stay in school. “These are the forgotten children,” said Mr. Lake, “marginalized simply because of the economic and social inequities in their societies, left behind simply because they were born poor or female, or of the wrong caste or in the wrong country.”
  • Indeed, the evidence shows that educated girls, in particular, grow into agents of change for their families, communities and societies as a whole. Providing girls with quality education can be a highly effective tool to address poverty, fight disease and improve economic development.
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  • Full participation can be fostered by involving girls in social support networks that help them stay in school, and by encouraging them to participate actively in making decisions that affect their lives. UNGEI is already supporting such initiatives in many places.
Teachers Without Borders

UNGEI - Senegal - In Senegal, Goodwill Ambassador Angélique Kidjo addresses v... - 0 views

  • Though today more than half of the students at the Liberté VI school are girls, Ms. Kidjo said there was more work to be done. Violence in school remains a reality for many Senegalese children, especially for girls.
  • Student Aida Yacine Sy, 8, said girls must be careful. “My mom told me not to wear short clothing. I should not go into a room alone with a teacher or a group of boys. It is not smart,” she said as her friends nodded in agreement. Other students at the school said violence could mean anything from bullying to rape. Seated alongside students at a small wooden desk, Ms. Kidjo listened to their stories. Violence, she told them, is never the answer. “When I was young, kids bullied me because I was small. My dad told me that my brain is my best weapon,” she said. “You must have a strategy. You must speak to your teachers and parents.”
  • A safe learning environment is essential to keeping girls in school. In Senegal, violence in school, early marriage, sexual abuse, gender discrimination and poverty can impede a girl’s ability to learn.
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  • West Africa has some of the world’s lowest gender parity and girls’ primary-school enrolment rates. In Senegal, fewer than one in five girls are able to go to secondary school – and later in life there are only 6 literate adult women for every 10 literate men.
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China to offer compulsory education to 95 percent of girls - 0 views

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    BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- An official document released on Monday pledged that the government will endeavor to provide compulsory education to 95 percent of Chinese girls over the next ten years. The Outline for the Development of Chinese Women (2011-2020) issued by the State Council, or China's cabinet, said that the government will continue to promote equal opportunity for nine years of free schooling for all children, but especially for girls, who are more likely to drop out.
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allAfrica.com: Africa: Abolishing Fees Boosts African Schooling (Page 2 of 2) - 0 views

  • Malawi struggles to cope GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetB" ); GA_googleCreateDomIframe('google_ads_div_AllAfrica_Story_InsetB' ,'AllAfrica_Story_InsetB'); Other countries have been less successful. Malawi eliminated its school fees in 1994. But with less than half of Kenya's gross domestic product per person and fewer financial and human resources to draw on, it still faces difficult challenges in providing universal primary education.
  • As in many other African countries, notes the UN study, "the adoption of universal primary education was triggered by political demands rather than by rational planning processes." Although Malawi had lifted some fees for Standards 1 and 2 and waived primary education fees for girls prior to 1994, the decision to eliminate all fees coincided with the return of multiparty elections that year. The focus, the researchers found, was on increasing enrolment. "Very little attention was paid to quality issues."
  • One immediate response was to hire 20,000 new teachers, almost all of whom were secondary school graduates who were given only two weeks of training. Plans to provide on-the-job training failed to materialize. Instructional quality declined sharply as the pupil-teacher ratio climbed to 70 to 1.
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  • The lack of facilities meant that many classes met under trees, and books and teaching materials arrived months late, if at all. Despite increases in the education budget, spending per student, already low, declined by about 25 per cent and contributed to the decline in quality. As a result nearly 300,000 students dropped out during the first year, and high dropout rates continue to this day.
  • Overall, reports the UN study, only about 20 per cent of boys and girls successfully complete eight years of primary education in Malawi. This is largely a function of the country's deep poverty, the researchers say, and the lack of resources, such as nutrition programmes, to help poor children remain in school.
  • The abolition of school fees is a precondition for getting large numbers of poor children into school, but it must be accompanied by strong public and political support, sound planning and reform, and increased financing.
  • fter systems adjust to the surge in enrolment, they argue, resources must be directed at improving quality and meeting the needs of the very poor, those in distant rural areas and children with disabilities. The analysts say that a particular focus should be girls, who face a range of obstacles to attending and staying in school, including cultural attitudes that devalue education for women. Improved sanitation and facilities and better safety and security conditions can make it easier to keep girls in school.
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The East African:  - News |How long do East African pupils remain in school? - 0 views

  • Tanzania and Burundi, for instance, have recorded a 99 per cent enrolment rate into the first grade of primary school.The pertinent question is: How effective are these funds in retaining children in school? Once enrolled, how long can the pupils be expected to last in the education system, and how many years of schooling, on average, are actually attained by East African pupils?
  • However, East Africa is faring badly a 9.1 years, equivalent to a pupil completing primary school, but dropping out of high school. The average number of school years actually completed regionally was a mere 4.7 years. The scenario is particularly dismal in Burundi, where on average pupils completed only 2.7 years of school.
  • According to the Global Education Digest 2010 published by Unesco, in the late 1990s, developing countries began to recover some of the educational ground lost in the 1980s, when enrolments stagnated or even declined in sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In fact, the pace of progress accelerated since 2000 and if trends between 2000 and 2008 continue, the increase in school life expectancy in the current decade will be three times the level achieved in the 1970s.In sub-Saharan Africa, school life expectancy nearly doubled from 4.4 years to 8.4 years in the past 30 years. Despite this progress, the region has the lowest number of school years — almost half of the number of years in North America and Western Europe (16.0 years).
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  • As pointed out by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, primary education without transition into secondary and tertiary levels can only lock a country in a basic factor-driven economy.
  • n Burundi, for instance, government commitments to providing universal primary education appear to be directed towards enrolment.From an enrolment rate of 36 per cent in 1999, the country recorded a full 99 per cent of girls and close to 100 per cent of boys enrolled in primary school nine years later. School drop-out rates are high however, as only 45 per cent of Burundian children complete a full course of primary education.
  • Girls in Rwandan primary schools outnumber boys: 97 per cent of girls compared with 95 per cent of boys are enrolled in primary school. Slightly more than half (54 per cent) of Rwandan children complete primary school. Secondary school enrolment in the country stands at 21.9 per cent, the second lowest in the region.
  • he situation in Uganda is similar — 98 per cent of girls and 96 per cent of boys are currently enrolled in primary school. Completion rate of primary school is 56 per cent. The transition rate into secondary school is low, however, with most pupils unable to progress past the final grade of primary school — only 21 per cent of girls and 22 per cent of boys make it into secondary school.
  • Kenya lags behind other East African countries in primary school enrolment — 82 per cent of girls and 81 per cent of boys of primary age are enrolled in school.
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allAfrica.com: Ghana: Karaga Parents Refuse to Send Girls to School - 0 views

  • According to Madam Fatima, most of the Muslim parents, in spite of the Capitation Grant, School Feeding and supply of free school uniforms and exercise books by the government, still prefer to send their children to the farms, or allow them to travel down south for menial jobs such as 'Kayayei', rather than send them to school.
  • schools in the Karaga District continued to record low female enrollment every academic year, more especially, the Islamic schools. Citing her school, which is also an Islamic school as an example, Madam Fatima described it as being "highly unacceptable" to see a school with a population of 700, with only 200 females. Out of the 523 pupils at the primary level, only 160 are girls, and at Junior High 1 and 2, only 21 are females out of 134 pupils.
  • Madam Fatima told The Chronicle that even though the Karaga District Education Directorate and the District Assembly had over the years embarked on sensitisation campaigns to encourage parents and even traditional rulers to push their female wards to school, something positive was yet to come out it.
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    She indicated that the majority of the parents were of the view that the education of girls was irrelevant, since a woman would eventually end up in a man's house as a wife, no matter the successes she achieves in education.
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Student Drop Out Rate on the Increase Despite Free Education - IPS ipsnews.net - 1 views

  • The free primary education, which is also compulsory, saw many children, particularly from poor families; enjoy an opportunity to be in school. Based on reports by the Ministry of Education, the number of boys and girls enrolled in primary school has risen from five million to a staggering eight million.
  • According to the latest Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS), 40 percent of adolescent girls without any education are either pregnant or have already become mothers. In addition, for those girls with only a primary school education, 26 percent are mothers compared to an eight percent of those who have a secondary school education or higher.
  • "This shows that the impact of secondary and even college education can delay child- bearing and therefore give girls an opportunity to pursue their dreams," expounds Nelly Mwangi, a teacher in Nairobi.
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  • According to the findings of a national survey of secondary school students, over 13 percent of students will have experienced their first pregnancy by the time they celebrate their fourteenth birthday.
  • "Although there is sexual education incorporated into the curriculum, it is too basic and may not be an effective intervention, based on all the explicit messages that children are exposed to from such an early age," explains Paul Kipkorir, a teacher in Nairobi.
  • To fill the gap, various stakeholders have begun supporting the ‘Return to School’ programme, which has faced numerous challenges. " Pupils taunt and mock those who come to school after giving birth. Schools therefore need to be more sensitive to teenage mothers if they are to continue with their education," explains Paul Kipkorir.
  • Further, there have been various efforts towards more preventive measures. The Ministry of Education is now working closely with organisations that have vast experience in the field of adolescents’ reproductive health and are able to provide more comprehensive information on sexuality in schools.
Teachers Without Borders

Educating Girls A Must | Editorials | Editorial - 0 views

  • Girls' education brings enormous benefits far beyond improving the lives of the girls themselves.  Once an educated girl becomes an adult, there are many continuing benefits of her education, not only for herself, but also for her community.  
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Because I Am a Girl Report 2011 - Zunia.org - 1 views

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    This year's Because I Am A Girl report launched by Plan International revealed that 65 per cent of participants from Rwanda and India agreed that a woman should tolerate violence in order to keep her family intact. With the theme What About Boys?, the report further found out that another 43 per cent agreed with the statement that there were times when a woman deserved to be beaten.
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'Buy a Girl:' An Unusual Anti Child Marriage Campaign - India Real Time - WSJ - 1 views

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    As India celebrated Akshaya Tritiya on Tuesday, a festival associated with mass weddings, many activists renewed their calls against child marriage. "Raise your voice against child marriage on #AkshayTritiya, an auspicious day for Hindu marriage in India," UNICEF India said on Twitter. There are many campaigns around the world against child marriage in India, where the practice remains common despite being illegal. Perhaps the most original one is "The Girl Store" - which some may find is in bad taste.
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New UN atlas shows access to secondary education still a challenge for girls - 0 views

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    New UN atlas shows access to secondary education still a challenge for girls
Teachers Without Borders

In Zimbabwe, school grants provide equal learning opportunities to girls | Ba... - 0 views

  • BULILIMA, Zimbabwe, 7 December 2011 – After completing the fourth grade at the top of her class, 13-year-old Ellen Mbedzi was forced to drop out of Mafeha Primary School in Bulilima, a district in south-western Zimbabwe. Her unemployed father did not see the value of spending the family’s limited resources on a girl.
  • Ellen became a recipient of the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) programme, a school grant programme that helps disadvantaged children stay in school, or, in Ellen’s case, return to the classroom. Her school also received support from the Education Transition Fund (ETF), which provided textbooks in four core subjects – math, English, environmental sciences and a local language – to every student in the school.
  • ETF, an innovative partnership of the government, UNICEF and the international donor community, offers large-scale support to the education sector, and provides much-needed resources and textbooks to every primary school. So far, 15 million textbooks were distributed around the country, and an additional distribution of 7 million is planned.
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UNGEI - News and Events - A primary school becomes a model for increasing girls' enrolment - 0 views

  • WESTERN EQUATORIA, South Sudan, 27 October 2011 – Access to education is one of the key priorities for the government of the world’s newest nation, South Sudan. Seventy per cent of children aged 6 to 17 have never set foot in a classroom. The completion rate in primary schools is only 21 per cent, one of the lowest in the world.
  • Baya Primary School in Western Equatoria has become the envy of other schools in the state. The school is successfully using its own child clubs, not only to increase girls’ enrolment but also encourage dropouts to join the Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP).
  • UNICEF and the Ministry of General Education and Instruction have been providing supplies such as school bags, notebooks, training, learning and essential teaching materials to support the initiative in South Sudan.
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  • In 2007, UNICEF initiated the Girls’ Education Movement (GEM) throughout Southern Sudan. The Baya Primary School GEM club has been since 2008. Chaired by a dynamic 13-year-old, Tabitha Morris, it has 50 members who organize various activities using the ‘edutainment’ approach – with skits, dramas, rallies, dance and visits to the community.
  • All children in South Sudan have the right to education. And the child-to-child approach taken by GEM clubs offers one good alternative for helping girls get an education.
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PAKISTAN: Wanted: A Revolution For Girls - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

  • KHAIRPUR, Nov 8, 2011 (IPS) - Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince the men in Malangabad – her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi – to treat women as equals.Only then, she says, will women and girls be free from forced marriages and be safe from domestic violence. Her words, unusual for such a young girl hailing from the hinterlands of rural Pakistan, take most people by surprise.
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PERU : Rural Girls Face Barriers to Education - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

  • "It was a really difficult and dangerous walk," especially when the girls had to make the trek home at night, the 18-year-old Sena, who is from Tumpa in the west-central highlands region of Ancash, told IPS. Although she managed to complete her secondary school studies, many of the other girls in her class dropped out, due to the numerous barriers standing in the way of education for girls in many of Peru's impoverished rural regions.
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As Southern Sudan looks to nationhood, education is pivotal | Back on Track - 0 views

  • At the end of this week, Southern Sudan will become an independent nation. Citizens of the newest country in the world, the people of Southern Sudan face immense challenges and immediate threats.
  • They also stand before a unique opportunity to build a country that is free of war, respectful of human rights and prosperous. Education will play a pivotal role in the future stability and economic development of Southern Sudan.
  • more than 100,000 Sudanese civilians have been displaced due to recent clashes over the contested border district of Abyei. About half of them are children who are being exposed to hunger, violence and disease. They are often separated from their parents and out of school due to the conflict.
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  • Southern Sudan ranks second to last when it comes to primary school enrolment, with almost 1.3 million children of primary school age out of school.
  • For the girls, the situation is even worse. Only around 8 per cent of women in Southern Sudan are literate, giving it one of the lowest female literacy rates in the world.
  • “When we first began, there were hardly any girls in the classroom, maybe two or three,” she said. “But now, in a classroom of 60, [there] would be 27 to, sometimes, half” of the class composed of girl students.
  • “The teacher-parent associations are getting stronger,” she said. “We really need to create community awareness.”
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In post-flood Pakistan, temporary learning centres offer education amid uncer... - 0 views

  • With UNICEF support, a Temporary Learning Centre (TLC), or emergency tent school, has been established in the camp. One of her brothers is a regular attendee, and Luxmi has started going as well. It is the first chance she has had to go to school, and it is opening up possibilities that were previously unimaginable.
  • “I want to learn more. When I grow up, I can start working like girls in the cities,” she said. ”Maybe I can become a teacher. But it is difficult. I have only just learnt my alphabet and counting.”
  • With 60 per cent of schools in affected areas damaged, UNICEF has established 2,070 TLCs, benefiting over 100,000 children in Sindh and Balochistan. Intended to ensure that education is not interrupted, the TLCs have also attracted over 39,000 children to school for the first time, including 16,000 girls.
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    With UNICEF support, a Temporary Learning Centre (TLC), or emergency tent school, has been established in the camp. One of her brothers is a regular attendee, and Luxmi has started going as well. It is the first chance she has had to go to school, and it is opening up possibilities that were previously unimaginable. "I want to learn more. When I grow up, I can start working like girls in the cities," she said. "Maybe I can become a teacher. But it is difficult. I have only just learnt my alphabet and counting." © UNICEF Pakistan/2012/Chaudhry Luxmi and her younger brother learn to count at a UNICEF-supported Temporary Learning Centre in Naukot, Pakistan. With 60 per cent of schools in affected areas damaged, UNICEF has established 2,070 TLCs, benefiting over 100,000 children in Sindh and Balochistan. Intended to ensure that education is not interrupted, the TLCs have also attracted over 39,000 children to school for the first time, including 16,000
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