Concept Note

Compilation of good practices in girls’ and women’s education in West Africa
Concept Note
List of acronyms and abbreviations
ANCEFA
Africa Network Campaign on Education For All
AWEN
African Women in Education Network
BEI
Basic Education Inspectorate
CEC
Commune Education Commissions
CEC
Community-Based Early Learning Center
CP
Child Protection
EFA
Education for All
EFTP
Technical and Vocational Education and Training
FAWE
Forum for African Women Educationalists
GER
Gross Enrollment Rate
GPE
Global Partnership for Education
GRP
Gender-Responsive Pedagogy
IC
Introductory Courses
IDP
Internally displaced person
LEPG
Local Education Partners' Group
PASF
Girls Enrollment Support Project
PEC
Management
PMA
Pupils Mothers Association
PTA
Parent-Teacher Associations
SMC
School Management Committee
SMT
Sciences, Mathematics and Technology
SRGBV
School-Related Gender-Based Violence
TFP
Technical and Financial Partners
UNGEI
United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative
UNICEF
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
UWP
Unwanted Pregnancy
WCARO
UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office
VGMS
Violences de genre en milieu scolaire
Executive Summary
In West and Central Africa, 24 million children including 13 million girls do not
attend primary school. This same geographical area records the world’s lowest
literacy rates. Less than half of women above the age of 15 can read or write.
While progress in education has been made over the last fifteen years in Africa
and elsewhere, enrollment rates remain very low in many areas. If multiple factors
impede access to education for children in general, they are particularly varied and
complex when it comes specifically to girls. Beside the very high early marriage rate
in the region3, a large number of girls are victims at school of physical, psychological
and sexual violence (corporal punishments, insults, abuses, sexual harassment, rape).
A good deal of field surveys conducted in West Africa highlight the fact that schoolrelated gender-based violence is “widespread and affects primarily young girls“4.
These harmful factors to girls’ education along with a real lack of gender-responsive
facilities (construction of separate latrines, facilitated sanitary access, MHM5, etc.)
negatively affect the progress expected in terms of girls’ education and gender
equality.
3. Statistics relating to
early marriage ages in
West and Central Africa
are alarming. West and
Central Africa experience
the highest rates with,
respectively, 40% and 49%
of girls under 19 living in
a conjugal relationship.
Niger, Chad and Mali have
the highest rate of women
aged between 20 and 24
who report being married
or living in a couple from
age15. Sources : Mapping
of early marriage in West
Africa, September 2013
4. Les violences de genre
en milieu scolaire en
Afrique subsaharienne
francophone –
Comprendre leurs impacts
sur la scolarisation des
filles pour mieux les
comprendre – Ministère
des Affaires Étrangères et
européennes - 2012
5. Menstrual Hygiene
Management
The persistence of gender inequalities in education raises many questions regarding
the coordination and harmonization of the initiatives put in place but also the
relevance of measures, actions and policy advocacy efforts. in 2014, UNICEF (West
and Central Africa Regional Office), (with the support of the United Nations Girls’
Education Initiative (UNGEI), Aide et Action, Plan (West Africa Regional Office), the
Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) and ANCEFA (Africa Network
Campaign on Education for All) have established a regional partnership on girls’
education around a good practice documentation project in girls’ and women’s
education programs in West Africa. One of the targeted objectives is to combine
efforts made in this area but also to create a knowledge and experience sharing as
well as exchange framework to improve the coordination of activities. The objective
is to significantly improve the access and quality of girls’ and women’s education in
West Africa.
The purpose of this report is to highlight the best practices of partner organizations
involved in girls’ and women’s education in the sub-region by reviewing the strategies,
initiatives, procedures and behaviors which have generated good results. In addition
to compiling a set of experiences, this report seeks to improve the quality of girls’ and
women’s education and advocacy programs based on validated best practices from
the experience of the different participating organizations. The report also provides
an analytical framework of best practices and a template for the monitoring of good
practices through an accurate evolving documentation, which fits within a reviewed
framework. This template will also allow easier communication and sharing between
different partner organizations for joint strategies around best practices in girls’ and
women’s education in West Africa. This template may encourage exchanges and
connections between organizations and enable them to join their voice around
common paths in girls’ and women’s education. This document is also intended to
be a joint tool for identifying, documenting, sharing and promoting proven solutions
in the field of girls’ and women’s education in West Africa. With the constant hope
to always improve future projects and programs.
Methodology used
The analytical review of good practices presented in this report is based on the
information collected by the consultant from the five organizations and a detailed
documentary review. These documents, varied in terms of geographical areas (subregional, regional, national, local) partner organization, methodology, objectives,
intervention areas, break out as follows: program and project description, annual
reports, progress reports, final reports, capitalization documents, evaluation reports,
research reports and training manuals.
These may range from increasing access to educational opportunities to those relating
to gender responsive teaching and learning approaches, improved gender relations
in schools and education systems, and enhanced girls’ learning and achievement,
including non-cognitive measures relating to self-esteem and leadership.
This report on good practices in girls’ and women’s education aims also at identifying
ways to build on existing good practices and ensure greater and wider positive impact
on education in Africa. In this regard, the Consultant responsible for this report
provides a template for evaluating good practices based on the UNGEI criteria for
identifying good practices. This template captures the main questions, reflections and
issues related to the evaluation of a good practice and suggests ways to document
and share some of the key successes and good practices for girls’ and women’s
education in West Africa.
This report includes:
- a contextualization of girls’ and women’s education in West Africa ;
-a review of the concept of good practice and good practice capitalization as
an efficiency factor ;
-identification and good practice analysis criteria ;
-a template to collect and evaluate good practice examples of girls and
women’s education programs ;
-a compilation of good practices in girls’ and women education in West
Africa ;
-recommendations;
-a conclusion ;
-a bibliography
Background
“Mankind owes to the child the best it has.“
Geneva Declaration, 1924
Education is a basic and universal human right, which should be enjoyed by all
children, without distinction or discrimination. Enshrined worldwide through national
and international legislations, education should enable all children, boys and girls
to benefit from the same conditions and opportunities to build a favorable future
for their fulfillment. Indeed, every child deserves a quality education which includes
a gender equality dimension. Such education, focusing on human rights, will allow
fighting against inequalities, which are deeply rooted and enshrined in most societies,
and almost always to the detriment of girls and women.
In 2000, the representatives of 164 Nations-States participated in the World
Education Forum, held in Dakar, Senegal, and undertook to achieving six key goals to
ensure Education for All by 2015. Adopted during the World Education Forum, the
Dakar Framework for Action, “reaffirms the goal of education for all as laid out by
the World Conference on Education for All“ held in Jomtien, in 1990, and particularly
emphasizes both on the achievement of Universal Primary Education and girls’ and
women’s right to education. While the Dakar Framework for Action and Millennium
Development Goals set a goal of eliminating gender disparities in primary and
secondary education by 2005, and to establish, by 2015, gender equality at all levels
of education, still in 2014, a -very- large number of girls are deprived of their basic
human right of access to education. Although education is the area recording most
significant progresses in reducing gender inequalities during the last twenty years,
there are still numerous gender disparities. And if parity has been achieved globally in
boys and girls enrollment in primary school, there are still large geographic, economic
and social disparities in actual schooling. So, while 32% of girls do not complete a
full education cycle, 39 millions of girls aged between 11 and 15 are dropouts, this
represents 26% of the age group.
6. UNICEF
7. Girl’s Education in Africa,
What do we know about
strategies that work, Eileen
Kane, The world Bank
If raising children contributes to reducing poverty, decreasing infant mortality and
promoting gender equality, girls’ education overall favors the development of all.
Indeed, girls’ education, particularly their enrollment and retention at school, has a
«multiplier effect6. “Having completed a basic education broadens their choices and
empowers them to evolve throughout their life, resulting in multiple benefits for the
country, the household and the family“7. Education is undoubtedly a key factor in
enabling women to carry out income-generating activities, contribute to household
income and achieve economic and social autonomy. Thus, it is demonstrated today
that an educated girl will marry later, have fewer children, and feed herself better,
will obtain better paid job, and will be more involved in decision-making in social,
economic and political areas. And her children, in turn, will be more likely to go and
stay at school in better conditions.
If barriers to children’s education are multiple (poverty, isolation, etc.), many factors
are specific to girls and explain girls’ exclusion from education and gross gender
inequities existing today in the education area. Girls, who are always the first to be
withdrawn from school, face a number of specific barriers. First, they are discriminated
against because of their social role which is different from that of men. The role of
girls is perceived as being to stay at home, assist their mother in household chores
(productive role), and parents do not always value their education as much as their
brothers. Girls also leave school because of early pregnancies preventing them from
attending classes. Early marriage also appears as an important barrier to education.
There is a double link between education and child marriage. Indeed, girls drop
out of school more frequently because of early marriage and education is a major
parameter for the prevention of marriage among girls and young women8. “It is
important“ […] to convince parents to keep their daughters in school and provide
them with the basic education they are entitled to9“. Widespread but still taboo,
inconspicuous and often unpunished school-related gender-based violence is another
very important factor of girls dropping out of school. This violence experienced
at school, on the way to school or around school, involves “multiple dimensions:
economic (as is the case in transactional sex), socio cultural (taboo on sexuality, lack
of sexuality education, unequal gender relationships) and health10“. They take several
forms (physical, psychological or sexual) and affect a large number of school girls
in West Africa. Although difficult to quantify, school-related gender-based violence
has multiple consequences and impacts and constitutes a major barrier to girls’ and
women’s access to education.
8. ICRW, new insights on
preventing child marriage :
a global analysis of factors
and programs,Washington
DC, 2007
9. Digest Innocenti (UNICEF)
N°7, Le mariage précoce,
mars 2001
10. Les violences de genre
en milieu scolaire en Afrique
subsaharienne francophone
– Comprendre leurs impacts
sur la scolarisation des filles
pour mieux les comprendre
– Ministère des Affaires
Étrangères et européennes
- 2012
11. Girl’s Education in Africa,
What do we know about
strategies that work, Eileen
Kane,The world Bank
12. Global Campaign
for Education & Results
Educational Fund, Make it
happen. Ending the Crisis in
Girls’ Education
These various and multiple discriminations undermine girls and women’s future, but
also that of their community and country, as girls’ education is recognized as a factor
contributing to development and poverty reduction. Educated women have “more
power in the household, they know more things and their opportunity costs are
higher“11. One additional year of primary schooling for girls is correlated with a further
increase in their future wages by 10-20%. This impact is also felt at macroeconomic
level : an 1% increase in women with a secondary school level can increase the
per capita income by 0.3%12. Girls’ schooling must therefore be considered from a
broader perspective of inequality reduction as a major lever for development. Equality
between girls and boys represent thus a condition and a lever allowing to ensure the
quality of the educational environment, contents and learning.
Key figures in West and Central Africa13
For West and Central Africa
More than 23 million children
are excluded from the primary
education in the region and 14 million
are at risk of being excluded
11% are late entrants
will
1/4 children
never go
to school
More than 8 million children are
excluded from the lower secondary
education in the region and 3 million
are at risk of being excluded
32% are 3 or more years behind in primary school
16% will drop out during the primary cycle
will
2/4 children
not complete
primary school
will
not complete
3/4 children
secondary school
A large proportion of adolescents aged 17/18 years are held back in a system that is not
appropriate for their age:
year olds are held back
1/10 17/18
in primary school
A girl from
a poor household
living in rural
area is
2x
year olds are held back
1/4 17/18
in secondary school
more likely
to be excluded
than a boy
from
a rich urban
household
13. Database of UNICEF
West and Central Africa
Regional Office, L’équité :
un fil rouge des politiques
éducatives nationales, Alain
Mingat and Francis Ndem
Concept of good practice
“A good practice is simply a process or a methodology that
represents the most effective way of achieving a specific objective.
Some people prefer to use the term ‘good practice’ as in reality
it is debatable whether there is a single ‘best’ approach – and of
course approaches
are constantly evolving and being updated. So, another way of
defining a good practice is one that has been proven to work
well and produce good results, and is therefore recommended as
a model. The essence of identifying and sharing good practices is
to learn from others and to re-use knowledge. The biggest benefit
consists in well developed processes based on accumulated
experience“.
SDC Knowledge Management Toolkit - 200414.
While there are several definitions in the international development area describing
what a good practice is, it must be acknowledged that the above-mentioned quote
gathers a number of key words helping to better identify the concept. Indeed, it is not
easy to define a good practice because the concept includes a number of realities.
It has commonly been written that “best practices“ are examples of processes and
conducts that have resulted in successes. The term “good practice“ is to be linked to
the term “best practices“ very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries where it is defined
as a process that works well. This definition remains unsatisfactory in many respects,
for being too simplistic; while it is true that, because of globalization, we generally find
the same problems in most education systems in the world, it is however unrealistic to
want to resolve them all exactly in the same way, i.e. to find one-size-fits-all solutions15.
Especially as the integration of gender-based analysis in the various stages of a project
involves specific responses according to the contexts.
14. Identifying and Sharing
Good Practices
15. Développement
curriculaire et « bonne
pratique » en éducation,
Cécilia Bralavsky, Abdoulaye
Anne and Maria Isabel
Patino
16. Idem
As approaches are constantly evolving, the term “best practices“ could instead be
used to define most successful practices. The “best practices“ would serve as a
framework to list the best tools, methods and approaches in specific situations. As for
good practices, the examples of best practices should include the ease of transfer to
other situations with similar goals and a concern of physical and financial sustainability.
On this basis, the expression “good practices“ remains more cautious than “best
practices“, as the use of “best practices“ could be seen as exclusionary, as involving
a notion of methodological hierarchy. More comprehensively, “good practices“ are
often presented as including an innovative, tested and assessed approach16, and which
can be assumed to be successful. It is innovation that helps improve the present and
which, therefore, has (or can have) a model or standard value in a given system.
In fact, “good practice“ and “innovation“ are close terms. But, if the two concepts are
connected, they are far from being interchangeable. Any innovation, is indeed, not
synonymous with success and cannot be considered as a good practice. Furthermore,
a good practice is not simply a practice that is good, but a proven practice enabling to
achieve good results, and which is as such recommended as a model. It is a successful,
proven, validated, in the broad sense and repeated experience that deserves to be
shared so that a greater number of people can adopt it17.
To describe the concept of good practice, it is essential to choose a broad but clear
definition which incorporates a flexible and inclusive reference framework.This broad
definition of good practice helps include actions, processes and methods, which are
documented, evaluated, containing a wealth of impacts and successes, replicable and
constantly improved.
Successful, tested and validated
Experience to be promoted
Gender sensitive experience
Replicable experience
Good
Practice
Cost-effective experience
Iterative experience
Innovating experience
Sustainable experience
17. Les bonnes pratiques à
la FAO : Une démarche de
capitalisation d’expériences
pour un apprentissage
continu
In the field of education, good practices are organizational, pedagogical and educational
achievements contributing to solve a problem18. Results-driven good practices in girls’
and women’s education should propose projects / programs that significantly improve
girls’ and women’s participation and learning by enhancing their empowerment.
UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office, (with the support of the United
Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), Aide et Action, Plan (West African Regional
Office), FAWE and ANCEFA consider it necessary to learn from the various past and
on-going experiences to continue to make progress in girls and women’s education
in West Africa. This approach, which involves the identification and understanding of
good practices, should help improve used methods and have a methodology which
is innovative, shareable and which can be disseminated at different levels. This work
on good practices aims to capitalize experiences, while avoiding to reproduce the
mistakes made but also to build on some successes and lessons learned to transform
them into key success tools.
Capitalization of good practices as an efficiency factor
To highlight these good practices, it is first of all necessary to capitalize experiences.
This essential and guiding notion of experience capitalization was raised in 1994 by
Pierre de Zutter, who wrote, in a book considered as a starting point of experience
capitalization approach within ISOs and NGOs, that “Capitalize is to transform the
experience into shareable knowledge19“. Once this capitalization process is completed,
the practice can change, be improved, tailored, shared and disseminated.The idea is to
understand better, to do better, share and disseminate it better.
18. Perspectives, vol.
XXXVIII, n° 2, juin 2008,
Ana Benavente et Christine
Panchaud
19. Des histoires, des savoirs,
des hommes : l’expérience
est un capital, FPH, Paris,
1994
The experience capitalization cycle to define good
practices : a participatory and non-linear process
Engage
in action
Understand,
integrate and apply
good practices
Capitalization
serves to:
Learn lessons
from past
experiences
Model
Explain
Share and
disseminate
good practices
Collect
and document
good practices
Develop
Good practice identification
and analysis criteria
To identify and analyze fruitful good practices in terms of girls’ and women’s education,
it seems necessary to establish good practice identification criteria. We have decided
in this report to build on the UNGEI’s criteria for identifying good practices based
themselves on the Commonwealth Secretariat’s guidelines for the submission of the
Good Practice Award in Education, 2012 and the UN Women’s Good Practices in
Gender Mainstreaming20.
The 8 identification criteria of UNGEI
20. http://www.un.org/
womenwatch/resources/
goodpractices/guideline.
html
1) Relevance
The good practice demonstrates a socio-culturally
sensitive and economically appropriate response to
the context and challenge of education delivery in
a specific context as well as to the identified needs
and priorities of the target population.
2) Gender-based
analysis
The good practice design and implementation
reflects systematically on the linkages between
gender relations and the issue to be addressed in
education, with a particular focus on social norms,
practices or beliefs and rules, policies or procedures
that influence the options, opportunities and
achievement of girls and boys and women and men
in the society.
3) Monitoring and
evaluation
The good practice includes the use of an effective
monitoring and evaluation system which is able
to demonstrate: a) the impact of the intervention
in measurable terms on the intended group,
system or organization; or b) at least evidence of
the effectiveness of the intervention; and c) the
possibility for collecting data based on intervention
monitoring and evaluation with a view to assess its
performance and impact.
4) Efficiency and
cost-effectiveness
The good practice indicates an efficient and
economical
use of resources in its implementation, and
demonstrates the link between activities and results,
actual or expected, in the lives of girls, women or
related to systems to be strengthened.
5) Participation
and partnership
orientation
The good practice demonstrates a broader
participatory and collaborative approach, involving
a range of actors (civil society, private sector, and
government, etc.) as well as girls and boys and
men and women exercising leadership on an equal
footing.
6) Sustainability
The good practice will include elements of
sustainability, including leveraging funds for
continuation, securing policy adoption of an
intervention or approach, or building the capacity
of actors to integrate the initiative into existing
systems of service delivery - whether government,
academia, civil society, schools, communities
or other - to ensure continued institutional and
financial support.
7) Replication
In similar conditions and circumstances, the good
practice is
potentially replicable in different contexts, within
the country or outside.
8) Lessons learned
The good practice should facilitate learning and
generate lessons that are relevant for dissemination
and transfer in other contexts. It should take
into account the conditions that facilitate success,
potential constraints impeding progress and or
provide additional knowledge likely to broaden
reflection on girls’ education and gender equality.
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