Findings from the 2024 G7 Global Objectives Report: Exploring how gender inequality has affected progress in EiEPC settings

• In Event: 40 million more girls in school and 20 million more reading: Examining G7 Global Objectives through protracted crises and digital technologies

Proposal

Approximately 72 million crisis-impacted children in the world are out of school (OOS) and 53% of these children are girls. Unfortunately, the overall global data on OOS children do not include these crisis-impacted OOS children, due to a number of significant challenges within education in emergencies and protracted crises (EiEPC) settings. This means that the global OOS data that has hitherto been used to monitor progress towards the first G7 Global Objective target (i.e., 40 million more girls in school), has likely been underestimated. This gap is most likely worse for Global Objective Two (i.e., 20 million more girls reading by end of primary), as the difficulties of collecting reliable, comparable learning data in emergency settings are even greater.

This paper locates these EiEPC challenges within the overall findings of the 2024 G7 Global Objectives Report. It will lay the groundwork for further symposium analyses and discussion by presenting: 1) a progress update for Objective One, drawing on new UIS data, which aims to include estimates for five protracted crisis contexts; 2) a progress update for Objective Two, drawing on some new UIS data, which do not include EiEPC contexts; 3) an overview of three EiEPC contexts that have differing degrees of achievement against the two Objectives, based on available data; 4) an analysis of the degree to which gender inequality has affected progress in these three contexts as well as with regard to the two Global Objectives, more broadly; and 5) an analysis of how digital technologies have not only increased data collection and learning in EiEPC contexts, but also the digital divide for the most marginalised girls.

Overall, this paper will reflect on how gender inequality has affected progress towards the Global Objectives, particularly in EiEPC settings. However, it will also discuss important work that is being done to address these issues and how education ministries, education clusters, G7 partners and the wider global education community can support, amplify and coordinate with each other in order to ensure that marginalised girls, who are further disadvantaged by emergency and protracted crises, are back in education and learning.

Author

• Sharon Tao, Level The Field