Letting Girls Learn: Promising Approaches in Primary and Secondary Education

This paper analyses the benefits from female education (who gains and in what ways) and the constraints (direct and opportunity costs, reflecting economics and tradition). It then outlines promising approaches for increasing female education. The demand for female education can be strengthened gradually through economic and sectoral policies that increase the returns. But, this paper focuses on education policies, many of which could be adopted now, to lower the costs, improve the quality, and increase access to education in ways that will allow more girls to attend school. It reports evidence of effectiveness and gives examples, particularly from projects involving the World Bank. Especially in poor countries, projects succeed best when they include a "package approach" to address what are typically multiple and powerful constraints to female education. The paper calls for increased monitoring and testing the cost-effectiveness of the kind of innovative packages now being tried in several developing countries.