Stepping up the game: What has changed for girls a year after the onset of an education intervention

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

(a) Overview
Education is universally recognized as an important investment in human capital. Not only does it endow individuals with the means to improve their skills, health, knowledge and productivity but it also enhances the economy’s ability to exploit and adapt new technology for social and economic advancement (Liu 2001). The promise of education was made to the world’s children in an attempt to fulfill their learning needs by 2015. This promise is premised on the fact that a decent education is a right to every child, in each and every country around the globe. For girls, the opportunities provided by a decent education are immense. Relevant primary and secondary education for girls brings well demonstrated benefits which trickle to the whole society (Rihani, 2006; UNESCO, 2012). For instance, when girls and women have higher education levels, there is lower fertility rate, family size becomes smaller, and health and economic status of women are stronger (Hervish & Feldman-Jacobs, 2011). In terms of economic growth, it is estimated that a one percent increase in the proportion of women enrolled in secondary school, generates 0.3 percent growth in the annual per-capita income (Dollar & Ghatti, 1999). Moreover, secondary education boosts a girl’s future earning by a margin of between 10-20 percent (World Bank, 2005). The gains in education for girls can only be realized when completion of primary school is accompanied by transition to secondary school. However, research evidence does suggest that participation rates are much lower at secondary levels, especially among the poor in SSA (Lewin, 2009). This suggests that there are children particularly girls who are still marginalized or excluded from the real benefits of a decent education. In Kenya, many girls among the urban poor are not making a transition to secondary schools and are therefore missing out on the opportunities that secondary education offers.
b) Objectives
The overall objective of the panel is to examine the evaluation and implementation design of a project aimed at improving learning outcomes among girls living in poor urban setting in Nairobi, Kenya. The panel also explores the midterm evaluation impacts of the project one year after the onset of the intervention.

c) Structure of the group panel:
The first paper explains the design of the study, the intervention and also examines household characteristics of girls of the cohort of girls who are part of the project. The second paper examines the changes in girls’ education aspirations, schooling interests, self-confidence, and individual behavior. The third paper examines reflections of parents and community members with the intervention one year after the onset of the intervention. The final paper documents the literacy and numeracy gains of the cohort of girls in grades 7-8.

d) Conceptual framework:
APHRC data show that there is no difference in school and health related decisions between mothers with primary level education and those with no education at all. The children from these mothers are more likely to miss out on the wider benefits of education. Education interventions such as after-school support, mentoring on life skills, coupled with school fees subsidy enhances the chances of transition to secondary education, thereby developing and shaping the minds of girls to embrace diversity that is inherent in all educated people around the globe. Effective education interventions are therefore critical in exploring the imagined future of girls in the urban informal settlements who are a subset of the marginalized.

e) Importance to the CIES
Expanding opportunities of access to primary education alone will not resolve the inequalities in learning outcomes and therefore cannot realize universal access to quality education. In order to reach the marginalized and vulnerable groups, particularly those living in the slums in the cities around the world, we need to think about an education that will develop and shapes minds to embrace humanism and thereby strengthen the importance of education as a vaccine against socio-economic inequality. The education intervention that girls are exposed to in the slums provide them with after-school support program, which is also supplemented with life-skills, while their parents are also counseled to understand the importance of education. In this intervention, we have encouraged girls to think of the world as a complex whole, a world which is interconnected and interdependent.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Benta A Abuya, African Population and Health Research Center

Individual Presentations

• A community based intervention to increase girls’ opportunity to learn: Study design, intervention and sample characteristics - Maurice Mutisya, African Population and Health Research Center; Benta A Abuya, African Population and Health Research Center; Moses Ngware, African Population and Health Research Center; Milka Perez Nyariro, African Population and Health Research Center

• What has changed? Parents and community members’ perceptions with an education intervention in the slums of Nairobi - Benta A Abuya, African Population and Health Research Center; Moses Ngware, African Population and Health Research Center; Milka Perez Nyariro, African Population and Health Research Center; Maurice Mutisya, African Population and Health Research Center

• Risky behavior and learning achievement among teenage school girls: The mediating effects of aspiration, self-confidence and interest in schooling - Moses Ngware, African Population and Health Research Center; Gerald Mahuro, African Population and Health Research Center

• Learning gains among girls from disadvantaged urban communities in Kenya - Njora Hungi, African Population and Health Research Center; Benta A Abuya, African Population and Health Research Center; Moses Ngware, African Population and Health Research Center