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Using evidence to accelerate progress in girls’ education: from systematic reviews to program mapping

Mon, April 15, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Atrium (Level 2), Waterfront E

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Successful policies and programs are directly tied to the quality of the evidence informing them, but too often scarce resources are invested in girls’ education interventions that are not evidence-based. Low and middle-income countries have made enormous progress in expanding primary school enrollment since the 1990s. Yet questions remain about the causes and consequences of continued gender gaps in school enrollment, progression, skill acquisition and school quality, as well as the best approaches to promoting broader outcomes like ambition, agency, cognitive ability, and critical thinking skills. More broadly, the success of programs designed to improve gender equality in education has often been measured by achievement of gender parity alone, rather than undertaking an analysis of the gender-related barriers that impede progress.

A recent analysis of trends in gender equality in education revealed that, in many low and middle-income countries:
• Progress in girls’ educational attainment has stagnated;
• Female disadvantages persist in access to school, although once enrolled, girls tend to complete as many grades as boys;
• Gender parity in attainment may mask gender-specific barriers to retention such as unplanned pregnancy for girls and work pressures for boys; and
• Gender parity in attainment does not necessarily translate into gender parity in learning.

As the education community pursues expanded global goals on educational attainment, lifelong learning, and gender equality, the need to align high quality evidence with policies and programs is more pressing than ever. Evidence is equally critical in identifying whether and how girls’ education contributes to achieving other Sustainable Development Goals such as reducing poverty, improving health, and climate change action. Taking a cross-sectoral approach that incorporates lessons from health, development, and leadership/civic engage ment, and identifies gaps in research, programs, and policy, can contribute to a vision of education for sustainability.

Accelerating Progress in Girls’ Education through Evidence, a multi-pronged program implemented by the Population Council with support from Echidna Giving, aims to generate and disseminate evidence, and foster connections between policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and advocates to enhance evidence-based decision-making.

This panel will present results from new applied research mapping the ecosystem of ongoing work in girls’ education from across sectors, as well as recent empirical evidence of the most effective approaches to addressing barriers to gender equality in education. Panelists will explore opportunities to use emerging evidence to accelerate progress, invite participation in a digital mapping effort, and discuss barriers to connecting evidence and practice.

The first study will present a novel analysis of programs that aim to improve access and learning for girls. Rather than confining itself to girl-targeted interventions, this systematic review poses the question of whether non-targeted interventions – those that benefit both girls and boys – significantly improve girls’ access to education and learning outcomes. Specifically, researchers ask:

1. Are girl-targeted interventions the most effective for improving access and learning?
2. For non-targeted interventions, do impacts on girls tend to be larger?
3. What specific interventions tend to be the most effective for improving girls’ access and learning?

Researchers draw on data from 180 studies and synthesize the effects for girls, comparing girl-targeted with non-targeted interventions. They will discuss findings for both access and learning.
The second presentation also brings a gender lens to the girls’ education evidence. Building on the work presented from the first study, researchers will share preliminary findings from a systematic review of the evidence on policies and interventions to address gender-related barriers that are widely believed to undermine girls’ school participation and learning. Interventions and policies of interest include, but are not limited to, efforts to: promote girls’ access to school, encourage positive attitudes of parents and teachers about girls’ schooling and academic abilities, provide resources (e.g. teacher training, curricula, textbooks) promoting gender equity in the classroom, eliminate restrictive policies making it difficult for pregnant adolescents and new mothers to remain in or return to school, provide gender sensitive life skills and social-emotional learning programs, and administer non-formal education interventions that address gender-related barriers to girls’ schooling.

Researchers will analyze how these programs affect enrollment in primary school, grade repetition, primary completion, progression to secondary, secondary completion, academic skills (literacy and numeracy), and critical thinking. In addition, tracking broader outcomes — e.g. life skills, social and emotional learning, experience of school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV), child marriage, adolescent childbearing, transition to work, civic participation, more equitable gender norms – will allow assessment of what we do and do not know about the links between girls’ education and greater equality, health, and activism for justice and environmental sustainability.
Complementing these evidence reviews is the third presentation: Mapping the girls’ education ecosystem. This effort is documenting the institutions, individuals, and activities that form the girls’ education ecosystem in an open-access database that allows users to search, sort and download information on girls’ education programs and actors at the global and country levels. Inclusion criteria reflect both more conventional approaches to improving girls’ education as well as strategies and conceptual frameworks that recognize the multiple levels and ways in which girls’ education and gender inequality interact, and the multiple outcomes they may affect. For every entry, detail about the program, including content of activities, reach, exposure, and how it is being evaluated are entered. Researchers will invite CIES participants to submit their current work for inclusion in this database, share their plans for build-out, and ask participants how to make this resource most useful. After a test of the beta version in early 2019, the mapping will be refined and expanded. Implementation lessons and course corrections will be shared and feedback and participation solicited.

In summary, this panel will showcase two major new systematic reviews on gender and education, and a global mapping of the girls’ education ecosystem. We will discuss the implications for practice, policy, and research including strategies for bridging the evidence to policy gap, and how participants can engage with and represent their own work in the mapping.

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