New Lessons: The Power of Educating Adolescent Girls

Offers data and analysis on the impact of education on adolescent girls' lives and highlights promising approaches. Calls for evaluating girl-friendly education programs, compiling data on non-formal schools, and improving curricula, access, and supports

Summary of New Lessons: The Power of Educating Adolescent Girls

Over the past 15 years, girls’ education in the developing world has been a story of progress, as noted in Promoting Healthy, Safe, and Productive Transitions to Adulthood Brief No. 33. Interest from the development community has grown steadily in response to evidence documenting the benefits of girls’ schooling, and female education is now a major part of global development commitments. Education helps adolescent girls avoid long working hours and early pregnancies, and lowers risk of HIV/AIDS, and secondary education offers greater prospects of remunerative employment. But according to a 2008 United Nations report, 113 countries failed to reach the 2005 Millennium Development Goals on gender equality in education. The Population Council’s research on schooling seeks to foster a deeper understanding of the patterns and trends in schooling for girls and the relationship between experiences in school, school quality, and adolescent outcomes. Findings from the Council’s most recent work on girls’ education are outlined in New Lessons: The Power of Educating Adolescent Girls, which builds a case for rigorous efforts by governments and NGOs to improve educational standards for adolescent girls

Girls\u27 schooling in developing countries: Highlights from Population Council research

As more girls from developing countries attend school into their teens, the importance of schooling experiences and school quality for adolescent sexual and reproductive health, as well as for girls’ successful transitions to adult roles, is clear. The Population Council’s research on schooling seeks to foster a deeper understanding of the patterns and trends in schooling for girls and more particularly the relationship between experiences in school, school quality, and various adolescent outcomes. Promoting Healthy, Safe, and Productive Transitions to Adulthood Brief No. 24 summarizes highlights from this research program under five subtopics: the demography of schooling; school attendance and its benefits for girls; sexual and reproductive experiences and school progress; gender equity, teacher attitudes, and school quality; and adolescent girls’ participation in the nonformal education sector. The research has been both comparative and in depth in selected countries, including Bangladesh, Egypt, Guatemala, Kenya, Pakistan, Senegal, and South Africa. It has run in parallel with the development and evaluation of programs to address the needs of out-of-school girls and other marginalized groups of girls

Schooling opportunities for girls as a stimulus for fertility change in rural Pakistan

This paper tests Caldwell’s mass schooling hypothesis in the context of rural Pakistan. His hypothesis was that the onset of the fertility transition is closely linked to the achievement of “mass formal schooling” of boys and girls. Punjab and Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) were selected for this study because they appear to be on the leading edge of the demographic transition-a transition that has only recently begun-as suggested by rapid recent increases in contraceptive practice. The study covered a range of rural villages or communities with very different socioeconomic and schooling conditions in order to examine the effects of both school access and quality on family-building behavior in Pakistan. The study concludes that gender equity in the schooling environment, as measured by the number of public primary schools for girls in the community or by the ratio of the number of girls’ schools to boys’ schools, has a statistically significant effect on the probability that a woman will express a desire to stop childbearing and, by extension, on the probability that she will operationalize those desires by practicing contraception. Indeed, the achievement of gender equity in primary school access in rural Punjab and NWFP could lead to a 14-15 percentage point rise in contraceptive use in villages where no girls’ public primary school currently exists and an 8 percentage point rise in villages with one primary school for girls. This is entirely supportive of the Caldwell argument that mass schooling is an important determinant of fertility change, particularly when girls are included. It would appear that fertility change will be much more difficult and will come much more slowly when girls are left behind

Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda

Explains how girls' welfare affects overall economic and social outcomes. Outlines steps to disaggregate health, education, and other data by age and gender; invest strategically in girls' programs; and ensure equitable benefits for girls in all sectors

Women\u27s lives and rapid fertility decline: Some lessons from Bangladesh and Egypt

In some of the more traditional parts of the world, fertility is falling steadily, sometimes rapidly, in environments where women’s lives remain severely constrained. The recent experiences of Bangladesh and Egypt, both predominantly Muslim countries, are illustrative in this regard. Since the late 1970s, rural and urban areas in both countries have experienced steady declines in fertility, with recent declines in rural Bangladesh similar to those in rural Egypt, despite lower levels of development and higher rates of poverty. This paper provides an in-depth exploration of the demographic transition in these two societies as seen through the dual lens of society-wide gender systems and a range of relevant state policies. It addresses three basic questions: (1) have measurable improvements in economic opportunities for women been a factor in the fertility decline in either country?; (2) have differences in gender systems at the societal level provided a more favorable environment for fertility decline in Bangladesh in comparison to Egypt, despite the former’s more modest economic achievements?; (3) in what ways can the development strategies adopted by the governments of Bangladesh and Egypt, with their very different implications for women’s opportunities in contexts where personal autonomy remains limited, be seen as additional factors in explaining the similar rural fertility declines despite dissimilar economic circumstances? After reviewing the evidence, the paper concludes that neither differences in existing gender systems nor measurable changes in women’s opportunities have been key factors in the notable demographic successes recorded in these two countries. Indeed, low levels of women’s autonomy have posed no barrier to fertility decline in either country. However, there is a case to be made that Bangladesh’s distinct approach to development, with considerable emphasis on reaching the rural poor and women and a strong reliance on non-governmental institutions may have played a part in accelerating the transition in that environment and in helping women to become more immediate beneficiaries of that process

Gender differences in the schooling experiences of adolescents in low-income countries: The case of Kenya

Little research on education in developing countries has focused on adolescent issues at the same time, despite the fact that a growing proportion of young people are spending some time in school during the phase of their lives between puberty and marriage, there is little research on schooling as a key dimension of the adolescent experience. This paper examines the school environment in Kenya and the potential ways it can help or hinder adolescents. We focus on gender differences with a view toward illuminating some of the factors that may present particular obstacles or opportunities for girls. The paper begins with a review of what is known about schooling and adolescence focusing on what the literature can tell us about the relationship between adolescent schooling experiences and “successful” transitions to adulthood, including not only the development of cognitive competencies, but the fulfillment of personal educational goals, the avoidance of pregnancy and the development of self-esteem and empowerment of young women. While the demographic literature views education as uniformly positive leading women to delay marriage and childbearing, the education literature views schools as conservative institutions that act to reinforce gender inequality in the society. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, the paper then continues with an analysis of 36 primary schools in three districts of Kenya chosen to reflect the spectrum of school quality in the country. The focus is on primary schools because the majority of adolescents in school attend primary school. In schools that encompass the range in terms of performance and parental status, disorganization coexists with strict punishment, minimal comforts are lacking, learning materials are scarce, learning is by rote, and sex is practiced but not taught. We find that girls do worse than boys in the primary school leaving exam and that better performing schools are not necessarily more gender equitable. Teachers’ attitudes and behavior reveal lower expectations for adolescent girls, traditional assumptions about gender roles and a double standard about sex

Teaching Elementary Accounting To Non-Accounting Majors

A central recurring theme in business education is the optimal strategy for improving introductory accounting, the gateway subject of business education. For many students, especially non-accounting majors, who are required to take introductory accounting as a requirement of the curriculum, introductory accounting has become a major obstacle for achieving their goal of obtaining undergraduate degree in business. This paper reviews a variety of common but underutilized strategies for presenting learning opportunities to non-accounting majors in their first accounting course. Effective teaching methodologies that will promote active learning to help non-accounting majors develop interest in accounting and enhance their critical thinking skills in the acquisition of accounting knowledge are explored. Included in this review are discussions about the adjustments that can be made relative to class size and individuality in the early pre-course stages. Teaching strategies such as the use of remedial modules, case studies, hands-on student participation opportunities, within or separate from the classroom lecture, mini-quizzes, and mnemonics are discussed. Guidance is offered to accounting academics who wish to fulfill their responsibility to students in the most difficult, rule-dominated, math-oriented, and consequently, high risk course of introductory accounting

Learning versus Working; Factors Affecting Adolescent Time Allocation in Pakistan

This paper explores how family, school and community factors influence adolescents’ time allocation among market work, domestic work, learning and leisure. We model adolescents’ time use in a multivariate framework, using explanatory variables characterising the household as well as labour demand, school access and school quality at the district level. This research shows that the amount of time children spend working, whether at home or in the market, is strongly correlated with household poverty, as proxied by an asset index. Consistent with the literature on the predictors of school enrolments of adolescents, the time spent on learning is also significantly lower among the poor. In Pakistan the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) census poverty score database, which includes information on household assets, would be a very promising tool to target efforts to increase children’s time allocated to learning. JEL classification: D60, I24, I30 Keywords: Pakistan, Education, Child Labour

The effect of gender differences in primary school access, type, and quality on the decision to enroll in rural Pakistan

The paper explores the effect of primary school access, type, and quality on the decision to enroll in rural Pakistan using a 1997 survey especially designed for this purpose. A unique contribution of the paper is the construction of gender-specific dimensions of school accessibility and school quality according to school type (i.e., public vs. private). Within the same village, girls and boys often face starkly different options for schooling in terms of distance, type, and quality. Public primary schools are segregated by sex; private schools, whose numbers have grown rapidly in recent years in response to rising demand and the inadequate supply of public schools, are more typically mixed. The decision to enroll in school and the choice of school type are modeled simultaneously using a nested multinomial logit model. Simulations of alternative scenarios in terms of school access (measured as whether or not a primary school is located in the village), type, and quality are used to express our findings. The presence of a public school for girls in the village makes an enormous difference for girls in primary enrollment given parents’ reluctance for girls to travel far from home; for boys this is less of an issue because most villages have at least one public school for boys. We find that the addition of a private school option in a village that already has a public school has little impact on overall enrollment rates but rather leads to a redistribution of enrollment from public to private school. Girls’ enrollment in public primary is particularly responsive to improvements in some aspects of school quality, in particular whether or not the teacher resides in the village. This would suggest that school quality is important not only for retention but also for enrollment