Achieving the Gender Parity Millennium Development Goal

"To make education a domestic and international priority, children, families and communities need to mobilise to demand their right to free, quality education. Sharing information, supporting dialogue and sparking debate over what free and quality education means will motivate people to hold governments and donors accountable for the injustice and inequality which exists in education systems."

Published in 2005, this 50-page Save the Children UK policy brief highlights experiences, strategies, and recommendations, such as that quoted above, in an effort to establish the links between education, gender and poverty. It offers guidance for communities, schools, governments, and the international community to help achieve the gender-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These Goals include MDG #2 - Achieve Universal Primary Education - and MDG #3 - Promote Gender Equality & Empower Women.

The paper is organised as follows:

• Section 2 looks at the underlying reasons why girls are not attending school: gender inequity and poverty. It identifies education as a key strategy for making progress on these two factors.
• Section 3 reviews progress on the 2005 gender parity in primary education target.
• Section 4 looks at why girls are kept out of school, focusing on three key issues: access, quality of education, and opportunity.
• Section 5 considers what more must be done to get all girls into school. It identifies strategies for mainstreaming gender into national policies; ways to encourage families to send their daughters to school; and teaching and learning approaches to address the challenges faced by girls, particularly those from economically poor families. This section offers examples (in text boxes) of communication projects that have worked to make school curricula gender-focused, sensitise teachers, involve boys and girls in the poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) process, and so on. Evidence is drawn from Save the Children's field, country, and international experiences, among other sources. Some impact data is provided.
• Section 6 identifies the funding gap in education, and discusses the constraints Southern countries face in increasing their spending (with a focus on the main obstacles preventing governments from increasing public spending on education).
• Section 7 puts forward recommendations for the UK government, which "has a particularly important role to play in bringing about positive changes for girls' education. As chair of the G8, the European Union (EU) and the Fast-Track Initiative (FTI), it can ensure that new resources are channelled into girls' education..."
• Section 8 draws conclusions.