Girls’ education remains a critical issue in developing countries, where numerous obstacles hinder girls’ access to and retention in school. Barriers include cultural and religious norms, inadequate teaching techniques, and heavy household responsibilities assigned to girls. Poverty also plays a significant role, as poor families often prioritize sending their sons to school over their daughters. To address this disparity, many donors and governments have implemented incentive programs, including girls’ scholarships.
Scholarship programs are designed to help families meet the costs of schooling, which can be both direct and indirect. Direct educational costs include tuition fees, exam fees, uniforms, and school supplies, while indirect costs involve the opportunity costs of foregone income or labor. Incentives can take various forms, such as scholarships, conditional cash transfers, food, allowances for uniforms, and free housing in dormitories. Scholarship programs have been identified as a quick and direct way to increase school enrollment.
The results of girls’ scholarships as a strategy for increasing girls’ attendance have been mixed. Assessments of scholarship programs have identified potential pitfalls and lessons learned that can be applied to future programs. Factors that can limit the effectiveness of a scholarship program include poor targeting of scholarship recipients, lack of clear criteria and processes for selecting the neediest children, and insufficient size of the scholarship package.
Successful administration of girls’ scholarship programs requires clear identification of eligibility criteria for recipients and careful targeting to ensure those most in need receive assistance. Clear expectations and accountability of recipient performance to maintain the scholarship are also essential. Transparent selection processes with active participation of the local community, direct and transparent transfer of cash portions of scholarships to recipients, and inclusion of critical mass of other child-friendly interventions are also crucial.
The Ambassadors Girls’ Scholarship Program (AGSP), a key component of the President’s Africa Education Initiative, has distributed over 180,000 scholarships to primary and secondary school girls in 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Scholarship packages vary depending on need and may include school fees, books, uniforms, and other school-related expenses. The program addresses several key issues of girls’ education in sub-Saharan Africa, including safety concerns, community gender biases, and the threat of HIV/AIDS.
In Egypt, the educational landscape has undergone significant changes since the 1952 Revolution, which expanded educational opportunities and abolished fees for public schools. However, despite these efforts, enrollment rates for girls continued to be lower than for boys, with significant regional differences in primary school enrollment rates. In some rural areas of Upper Egypt, as many as 50 percent of children enrolled in school did not regularly attend classes.
The AGSP is working with over 100 local organizations committed to girls’ education in the 40 countries to implement an integrated program. Local partners are paying special attention to selecting the most disadvantaged girls in each school, such as orphans, and working closely with mentors to ensure that girls have enough time to study and do their homework in safe environments. The program is managed by Sharon Mangin-Nwankwo and Charles Feezel of USAID Africa Bureau’s Education Division team.