Quality Education for Every Girl for 12 Years: Insights from RISE Programme Research

The rapid expansion that has brought nearly every child, girl and boy, into formal schooling is a remarkable development achievement. Despite this dramatic success in expansion, far too many children spend years in school without acquiring adequate basic skills. Governments, donors, and international organisations are increasingly acknowledging this learning crisis, and working to address it. Many are adopting an emphasis on the challenges faced by girls. The focus on quality education for girls provides an opportunity to move the education agenda to the next level: achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of providing every child with a quality education that achieves, at a minimum, functional literacy and numeracy. Four insights from completed and ongoing work from the Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Programme can inform this effort: 1. To realise the full benefits of education, ensure that girls are learning while in school. 2. To deliver learning to all girls and achieve the SDG of universal literacy and numeracy, girls must have access to systems that produce learning. 3. Start with the early primary school years. 4. Improving girls' education requires reorienting the system to be coherent for learning, which can include targeted approaches as part of an overall shift towards coherence.