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Session Submission Summary

Don't forget about the boys: Educational equity in LMIC Contexts.

Tue, March 25, 4:30 to 5:45pm, Palmer House, Floor: 7th Floor, Dearborn 3

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In recent decades, gender equity and inclusion approaches in education have emerged, validated and consolidated as central elements in reducing girls' severe disadvantages in accessing education and succeeding in school. With advances and setbacks, political and cultural conditions varying across countries and regions, progress has been made in mobilizing an agenda that promotes progress in girls' enrollment and retention and their learning outcomes, reducing the gender gap in school.
However, along with the persistent disadvantages and discrimination that girls face in accessing, staying in and learning in school, there is an increasingly shared diagnosis of the magnitude of the crisis affecting many boys to engage and succeed in their educational trajectories. In many regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA and the Caribbean, recent studies show that boys are more likely to repeat grades, not to progress to secondary education, let alone tertiary education, compared to girls. In addition, their school dropout rates are higher, and their learning outcomes are lower, which feeds a growing cycle of disengagement among boys with respect to the school experience.
This phenomenon is affected by gender normative conditioning factors that push toward traditional masculine roles, preventing the development of healthy masculinities that are not averse to school success. Also contributing to this phenomenon are socioeconomic conditioning factors that push adolescent boys into the labour market at an early and precarious age. In some regions, such as Central America, these phenomena also link to factors of insecurity, such as the fact that boys and young men represent about 90% of the victims and perpetrators in the current epidemic of homicides.
Addressing this dimension of the education crisis requires multidimensional actions capable of articulating diagnoses, interventions, local capacity building and scaling up to public policies.
There are few cases in which diagnoses are based on evidence produced in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), with approaches capable of considering regional, national, and local specificities. Even rarer are holistic, evidence-based, innovative, system and policy-based intervention models adapted to these contexts. Interventions are required to address the problem and generate sustainable, relevant and scalable changes in challenging contexts.
Recommendations from UNESCO´s 2022 report “Leave no child behind: Global report on boys’ disengagement from education” include the need to develop gender transformative environments for boys, develop and invest in a research agenda able to generate better data and actionable evidence, and promote integrated, coordinated and system-wide approaches.
This panel will deepen the knowledge and applied research needed to understand and address the disadvantages experienced by children and youth in their school trajectory from a perspective situated in and from the countries of the global south. It will promote multidisciplinary and applied approaches, combining comparable evidence and monitoring of interventions, capturing the voices and experiences of stakeholders, and exploring specific modalities to connect such evidence and models with the interests, knowledge gaps and priorities of Ministries of Education and educational communities.
The panel will address the following questions:
- What is the global picture of boys' educational disengagement, and how does it manifest in the specific contexts of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean? How does this relate to gender equality and the promotion of healthy masculinities?
- What are the implications of a "blind spot" on boys in terms of gender inclusion at the school and policy level, in research agendas and in multilateral development frameworks?
- What can be learned from applied research experiences that generate evidence on diagnostics, interventions and scaling up in public policy?
Panel Structure: The panel will be structured around three presentations that build on ongoing research and longstanding experiences
- A researchers from Equimundo, will present on early findings of “ Lifting Barriers: Educated Boys for Gender Equality” a KIX-GPE supported project exploring and addressing the roots of boys' disengagement In Lesotho, Cambodia and Malawi, as well as the Global Boyhood Initiative, focusing on the capacity-building dimensions of interventions.
- A researcher from from Raise Your Voice Saint Lucia will present early findings ‘Capacity building for gender equity and inclusion in Caribbean Schools’ which is a KIX-GPE supported project in three east Caribbean countries aiming to deepen understanding of the roots and causes of gender differences in educational outcomes and how school can innovate to improve equity.
- A researchers from RoomtoRead will present on the lessons and experiences as part of the Global Boyhood Initiative community, and a reflection on the “Life Skills for Equality Program” that the organization implemented with 7th and 8th grade boys in Cambodia, and how it continues shaping the organization's current and future programming globally.
The panel will be introduced and facilitated by the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange program of the Global Partnership for Education and the IDRC.
The presentations will be followed by a discussion exploring the aforementioned central questions, promoting thoughtful dialogue on creating effective and scalable interventions that address the specific needs of children in educational settings.
This panel will seek to illuminate current challenges and provide a space for the exchange of innovative ideas and the construction of sustainable solutions that respond to the needs of children in diverse and complex educational contexts.

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