Girls’ Education in Malawi

The state of girls’ education in Malawi…

According to UN statistics, although 27% of Malawi’s girls enroll in secondary school just 13% attend. Only a fraction of that 13% actually finish 4 years of secondary school and even fewer will pass their national final examinations that effectively qualify them as ‘graduates.’ Can you imagine a world where less than 7% of the women have attained a high school education? In Malawi, gender inequity in educational enrolment is evidenced by the relative under-enrollment of girls in secondary education by almost 2:1 compared to their male counterparts. Girls also consistently perform worse on national examinations and face dropout at a much higher rate.

The causes of gender inequity and girls’ dropout from school…

In Malawi, no high school education is free. When poor families have to pay to educate their children they are often forced to make tough choices about who can attend. In sub-Saharan Africa, boys earn more on the labor market, and a girl’s future is still seen as her ability to marry well. This has led to some striking imbalances in public education. We know that cost, is just one of many factors that contribute to girls’ lack of education. Without programs that address the multiple causes of dropout, simply financially supporting girls through school is not enough.

A girls’ likelihood of attending and staying in school depends in large part on:

• Her ability to pay for not just school fees, but also the associated costs of education, school uniforms, exam fees, notebooks, and pens are often prohibitive for the poorest families.
• Her access to accurate information about her own sexual & reproductive health, her rights and training in self-advocacy. This information helps girls make informed life choices, avoid early pregnancy, avoid contraction of STIs like HIV, help them to marry later, and avoid becoming victims of Gender Based Violence (GBV).
• Her access to information about post-secondary opportunities & the practical application of her education that helps her dream about a future beyond subsistence agriculture.
• Her access to educated female role models. For most of our girls they have no women in their lives who have completed school beyond the 8th grade.

Girls’ education is a necessary precondition for development…

At AGE we recognize that educational inequalities for women are driving factors in early marriage, pregnancy, relative poverty for women and increasing underdevelopment for entire communities. Access to quality education goes hand in hand with the skills and information necessary to translate education into positive life opportunities. With this in mind, we strive to provide academically talented students from some of the poorest backgrounds, with all the resources, information and skills they need to not simply finish school, but to pursue economic and/or continuing educational opportunity after graduation.