Fostering Agency and Resistance in Out-Of-School and At-Risk Children Claim their Right to Education through Alternative and Innovative Education Programs

Mon, March 11, 6:30 to 8:00pm, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Third Level, Foster 1

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Globally, over two and a half million children and youth are out-of-school, most of whom are in Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. These children are deprived of their fundamental right to education and pose a huge challenge to meeting the SDG target of inclusive and equitable quality education for all. For these children and young people, marginalized by a range of factors such as poverty, social status, geography, gender, and disabilities; the mainstream education systems do not represent or serve their needs as they ought to. For example, schools are often too far away, the timing and duration often do not take into consideration the contextual realities of their lives, direct and indirect costs exceed the financial capacities of families, pedagogical approaches exclude them from engaging in the learning process, and curriculum content is distant from lived realities and often irrelevant or perceived as irrelevant to their lives. There have been a variety of efforts by communities, civil society organizations, and non-state actors to meet the needs of these groups, including experiments with accelerated curriculum, alternative pedagogies, flexible organization and timing, linking education to contextual realities, introducing new skills and competencies, as well as engagement of families, communities, and education authorities. However, these efforts often remain isolated, under-resourced, and limited in scale, preventing these groups from developing a more cohesive and consolidated approach to advocating for more just and inclusive education systems on behalf of the young people they serve. There are limited efforts to bring collective voice and advocacy to children and youth, communities, and alternative education providers within and across countries to develop more robust campaigns to address the needs of these marginalized groups at a level of scale sufficient to address the challenge.
The presentations in this panel will draw on new evidence generated through the Global Partnership for Education’s Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (GPE-KIX) funded applied research projects to address some of these concerns. The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is a multi-stakeholder partnership and the largest global fund solely dedicated to transforming education in lower-income countries. KIX is the largest fund solely dedicated to bridging the knowledge gaps that undermine education systems in developing countries, funding applied research projects across 80+ GPE partner countries that are low- and lower-middle-income countries.
This panel will draw on the findings from four KIX projects that focus on tackling the challenge of out-of-school children and youth including those at risk of dropping out (OOSCY). The four projects assess the effectiveness and scalability of innovative education programs and practices to address these challenges through accelerated education programs, alternative learning programs, non-formal education and literacy programs, educational campaigns, and afterschool programs to meet the needs of underserved and excluded children and youth, across a diverse range of contexts. The projects span several countries in South Asia and Africa: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.
The first presentation will focus on how while ‘Leaving no one behind’ is central to the GPE’s mission, large numbers of children remain out of school or unable to complete even primary education in many GPE partner countries. It will discuss what leaving no one behind means in practice for countries attempting to transform their education systems with support from GPE and other development partners. It will highlight the ongoing exclusion from education of large numbers of children across GPE partner countries; and discuss the key barriers to participation and completion, the tensions countries face between enabling all children to participate in and complete education and improving low learning outcomes for those who are already in school, and some suggestions for how development partners and governments can address both.
Against this backdrop, the next three presentations will provide insights from KIX OOSCY projects, highlighting analyses of barriers to access and participation in each country, accelerated and non-formal education projects, descriptions of the processes they have employed and findings on the effectiveness of different approaches. Notably, based on the experiences and findings from their research work, the presentations will focus on themes related to theories, methodologies and pedagogies of protest. The presentations will focus on how alternative and innovative education approaches can be a catalyst for change, the pedagogies and strategies that enable the development of capacities to act and guide action.
More specifically, they will show (a) how people’s agency to demand equitable quality basic education can be built through research and alternative education programs in Ghana; (b) how building out-of-school girls’ agency can help challenge dominant cultural norms and teaching practices using school mapping exercises not only build voice and agency but also enable students to convey subtle messages to teachers and school leaders on the safety and friendliness of the school environment, and the pedagogical styles used in classrooms; and (c) how classroom, school, and community-level programs on child marriage, menstrual hygiene and eve-teasing/sexual harassment can enable students to analyze power dynamics, articulate viewpoints, raise marginalized voices, challenge oppressive systems and envision collective actions for positive change, and lead to reducing absenteeism, learning loss and school dropout in secondary school in marginalized communities in Dhaka (Bangladesh).
The final presentation will present the findings from a comprehensive synthesis of the four KIX projects on out-of-school children and youth. This will examine effective strategies and approaches for advocating for the realization of the right to education for marginalized children and youth, the potential for innovative education approaches to influence and change mainstream education systems, and how the innovative practices and programs can be adapted and scaled for greater impact and as a public good.

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