Girls have greater access to education than ever before, but equality is still a long way off

LONDON When Adelaide Tsogo Masenya was six years old, she switched primary schools. Her local school, Dr Knak Primary School, in the impoverished city of Alexandra in Johannesburg, taught only in her native Sepedi language. Her new school, Marlboro Gardens High School, had an English-only curriculum. Years later, when she asked her mother, a cashier who had only primary school education, why they had relocated her, her mother replied, You actually asked me to take you to an English school. Even at such a young age, Masenya, who is now 30, had plenty of choices to understand the importance of education for her future.

Masenya continued to attend university at Johannesburglater working both in human resources and as a high school teacher. She was also awarded a Chevening Scholarship to obtain a master’s degree in education and development at University College London, something that probably would not have been available if she had not had a good university entry for her degree. her university. Education has taken me to places where I never thought like a black girl by Alex I would reach, she said, sitting in an outdoor cafe in west London, where she now lives and runs the Tsogo Ya Bokamoso Foundation, a non-governmental education organization established. He focuses on advising high school girls back to her place of residence. It has made me live a free life where I am able to provide for my family, I am able to work in any space I want, I am able to have a voice and express my rights. Education has made me who I am today.

Masenya’s tale is unique, but it also illustrates the stories of millions of young girls and women across the globe who, if given a chance at education, can run with her. Through education, they can improve their lives and benefit from their families and communities through better health outcomes and late marriage and pregnancy. These are related to better educational outcomes, which, in turn, can lead to improved economic performance for the community as a whole.

These benefits have long been understood. It was 25 years since Masenya was urging her mother to change schools since 189 countries unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPA) to advance the rights of women and girls. One of the goals in the BDPA was for governments to increase access to education and training for women and girls.

It was the first time that girls’ education was involved in the goals of international development in a serious way. In the two and a half decades since, girls’ education has become a mainstay for multilateral organizations, NGOs, private foundations and individual governments pushing agendas not only to get more girls enrolled in school, but also to address some of the intertwined issues that drove them out of school, including poverty, cultural norms, and sexuality.

A UNESCO Global Education Oversight Report released on 9 October, A new generation: 25 years of striving for gender equality in education, highlights some of the advances of past decades. However, it also sets out what needs to be done more about educating all children, including better quality curricula and pedagogy, textbooks that are more inclusive, and increasing access to female teachers and mentors beyond primary school. .

The progress of the worlds in the last 25 years has been uneven. Since 1995, the global enrollment rate for girls has increased from 73 percent to 89 percent, with the largest improvements in sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia. More than 180 million more girls enrolled in primary and secondary school in 2018 compared to 1995, which included a 58 percent increase in girls enrolled in high school. Over the past 25 years, female enrollment in higher education has also tripled to a total of 115 million women enrolled in programs in 2018. Global numbers are impressive, but they hide regional disparities with many out-of-school girls in the world poorer countries. In at least 20 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in Pakistan, Haiti, Belize and Papua New Guinea, hardly any poor rural women have completed upper secondary education.

Another seemingly positive result is that global gender equality has been achieved in primary and secondary school. In 1995, there were only 90 girls registered for every 100 boys. In 2018, those figures were equal. But, again, the title figure masks big changes. India and China, with their large populations, have achieved gender equality (the percentage of all girls participating is equal to the percentage of boys), balancing almost every other country that does not.

There are also issues of discrimination in schools and the quality of education students are receiving. Gone are the days when we supported ourselves behind our backs on achieving gender equality and enrollment, said Yona Nestel, the Higher Education Policy Adviser to the International Plan, in September on Zoom. We know that girls can end their education by experiencing violence, harassment and discrimination throughout their education and plunge into a society that still does not value them. I consider these types of quantitative statistics as gender equality because it does not help us understand experience.

The UNESCO report also makes it clear that the world has a long way to go to improve the quality of curricula that children and adolescents are receiving in school. It is not enough for them to register physically in the classroom; as well as for educational outcomes. Last year, UNESCO found that in low- and middle-income countries, 53 percent of children could not read and understand a simple story by the end of elementary school. In some poor countries, that number was up to 80 percent. FoMany young girls and women and their parents in the school where they do not receive a quality education feel meaningless, while dropping out of school to find a job, home help or marriage may feel more rewarding. Now the discussion is really about what are those skills and competencies we need to focus on beyond hard math and hard reading, said in September Christina Kwauk, a member of the Brookings Institution Center for Universal Education on Zoom. What are those social and emotional components? What are the skills of the 21st century? There is a clear shift, she continued, from the history of access to the one centered around what it means to be in school and what it means to learn.

Discrimination against girls and women in school also continues to be a challenge. There are still two countries, Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea, that forbid girls to go to school if they wait. (Sierra Leone earlier this year overturned a similar ban.) Meanwhile, an estimated 12 million girls a year still marry before the age of 18, which is associated with less schooling and early pregnancy. Parents often continue to prioritize the education of their sons over their daughters. If you are young and do not go to school, there is an element of your participation in that decision, said Manos Antoninis, director of UNESCO Global Monitoring Report this month on Magnification. But if you are a girl, you have no choice if someone tells you not to go to school.

Textbooks continue to be biased, by gender, with women often represented in texts and illustrations in care positions, while men are more likely to present themselves as leaders and guides. This is partly because, as the report states, many of the textbooks in countries such as Nepal tend to be men. Even in Ethiopia, where there has been a strong commitment to gender equality in education since the BDPA, textbooks highlighted the stories of African kings, freedom fighters and leaders. Women who were heavily involved in the struggle for independence were nowhere to be found.

As girls progress through their school careers, they are less likely to see female teachers in the classroom. Worldwide, 94 percent of preschool teachers are women. But at the time female students receive their higher education, only 43 percent of their teachers are women. There is also a shortage of female mentors on school premises, from principals and administrators to government ministers in charge of education. At school we were never taught or told what you can study, where you can study, what is available in terms of funding, Masenya said in response to why she started her own mentoring NGO. I wanted to close the gap and make a way for girls to have access to education and information that I did not raise.

The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, has had devastating consequences for every country in the world, and the UNESCO report says the pandemic risks deepening existing inequalities. But Nestel, for one, hopes the pandemic can bring some positive results. I feel like COVID has opened up any illusions that it was not facing some pretty big inequalities within education, she said. And it will force the education sector to be more resilient and responsive to the needs of those who are most vulnerable. [So] it creates an opportunity for us to really move the needle in a much faster way than we had before.