Source · Select Committees · International Development Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Accepted
Paragraph: 40
The FCDO’s commitment to supporting women and girls, particularly through education, is welcome.
Conclusion
The FCDO’s commitment to supporting women and girls, particularly through education, is welcome. However, reductions in aid have been shown to disproportionately affect women and girls. Girls’ education is often more vulnerable when families face hardship and particularly during conflict or crises such as COVID-19. Many of these girls will never be able to return to school. Therefore, it is vital that the conditions that allow girls to attend to school for longer are addressed as well as the education systems themselves. General and reproductive healthcare, WASH access, caring responsibilities, child labour and early marriage all affect girls’ education, because new schools do not help girls if girls cannot attend them. Programmes that enable girls to access education must be adequately supported in line with the FCDO’s general commitment to supporting women and girls. The FCDO should focus education spending on the most impactful programmes for poverty Extreme poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals 53 reduction. This can be enhanced by complementary investments in social protection that reach the most vulnerable households, which are otherwise most likely to take girls out of school when crises occur.
Government response summary AI-generated
The FCDO established an on-demand expert advice facility (SPACE) and STAAR continues that support to governments and partners on strengthening social protection systems to help prevent and be able to respond to crises.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
40
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
As set out in the 2021 Girls’ Education Action Plan, we will redouble our efforts to ensure that all girls are supported to go to school and learn. This requires both strong education systems that are inclusive and deliver the skills girls need to fulfil their potential, and targeted support to address other barriers faced by the most marginalised. The UK’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) programme is the world’s largest programme dedicated to girls’ education, reaching up to 1.6 million marginalised girls through a cumulative investment of £855m over 13 years. Designed as a ‘challenge fund’, the GEC works to tackle barriers to education, and find better ways to get girls into quality education and learning. FCDO’s work to address the barriers to girls’ education is not limited to our education sector investments. For example, our investments in gender-responsive social protection, adolescent sexual and reproductive health and ending violence including child marriage also support girls’ education outcomes by addressing barriers to girls’ access and retention in school. The UK’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) programme is the world’s largest programme dedicated to girls’ education, reaching up to 1.6 million marginalised girls through a cumulative investment of £855m over 13 years. Designed as a ‘challenge fund’, the GEC works to tackle barriers to education, and find better ways to get girls into quality education and learning. The UK has committed £430m to the Global Partnership on Education (GPE). The GPE supports nations with high numbers of out-of-school children and weak school completion rates and focuses on reaching the children that are most marginalised and vulnerable including girls, children with disabilities, and those who live in countries that are characterised by extreme poverty and/or conflict. The GPE prioritises primary and lower secondary education because the returns of investing in these stages of education benefit the greatest number of poor children. Since its creation in 2002, the GPE has contributed to the largest expansion of primary and lower secondary schooling in history. Between 2015 and 2019, the GPE supported the education of 24.8 million children. There are now 82 million more girls in school in GPE partner countries and primary enrolment Extreme poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals: Government Response 5 for girls has increased by 65%. Almost three-quarters of partner countries have achieved gender parity in school completion rates.
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