06.03.07
Opposing Girls Education
“Investing in the education of girls has a high pay off,” says Christopher Colclough, the director of the Global Monitoring Report. “Education helps to increase (womens’) productivity to a significant extent, thereby adding to household incomes and reducing poverty. It also increases personal and social well-being. When parents, in particular mothers, are educated, their children – both boys and girls – will be healthier, better nourished and have a greater chance of going to school and doing well there. Investing in educating girls now is one of the best ways of ensuring that future generations will be educated.”
The need to supplement family income is one of the main reasons why children do not attend classes, says the Report. According to the most recent estimates “18 percent of children aged 5-14 are economically active, amounting to some 211 million children, about half of whom are girls.” In addition, many more millions of children are involved in domestic labour, sometimes at great cost to their educational participation or success. “A much larger proportion of these children are girls than boys,” says Colclough.
Cost is another major obstacle: in spite of the human rights instruments which commit states to free and compulsory education at primary level, school fees continue to be levied in at least 101 countries, in the form of tuition fees, the cost of books, compulsory school uniforms, and community contributions. In six African countries, states the Report, “parents were found to contribute almost one third of the total annual costs of primary schooling.”
There are also numerous other barriers to girls’ education including early marriage, HIV/AIDS, conflict, and violence in schools.
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
