Country Briefing: Ethiopia, 2023, Girls Education Challenge

NOVEMBER 2023

COUNTRY BRIEFING: ETHIOPIA The GEC has had four projects working in Ethiopia, which have aimed to improve learning opportunities and outcomes for over 106,859 of the country’s marginalised girls. Two projects have focused on transitioning girls between basic and secondary education. Two projects have supported the most marginalised and vulnerable out-of-school girls to gain functional literacy and numeracy and transition into formal schooling or safe livelihoods.

LEAD PARTNER

PROJECT

WINDOW

START DATE

END DATE

ChildHope

Excelling Against the Odds

GEC-Transition

April 2017

March 2021

Link Education International

Support Transition of Adolescent Girls through Enhanced Systems (STAGES)

GEC-Transition

May 2017

August 2024

Population Council

Biruh Tesfa for All

Leave No Girl Behind

September 2018

March 2023

People in Need

CHANGE

Leave No Girl Behind

November 2018

October 2023

© Link Education International

The Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) was launched by FCDO in 2012 as a 12-year commitment to reach the most marginalised girls in the world and is the largest global fund dedicated to girls’ education.

GEC COUNTRY BRIEFING MARCH 2023 / ETHIOPIA

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LEAD PARTNER

NUMBER OF GIRLS TARGETED

NUMBER OF GIRLS WITH DISABILITIES TARGETED

NUMBER OF BOYS TARGETED

TEACHERS TRAINED

TEXTBOOKS AND LEARNING MATERIALS DISTRIBUTED

CLASSROOMS AND LEARNING SPACES CONSTRUCTED OR RENOVATED

STUDENT KITS DISTRIBUTED

ASSISTIVE LEARNING DEVICES PROVIDED

ChildHope

16,481

445

0

828

19,870

0

55,575

104

Link Education International

61,345

2,912

0

11,686

46,885

11

55,080

15

Population Council

4,065

882

0

459

22,713

79

27,932

329

People in Need

24,968

1,348

500

795

42,922

150

63,960

157

Improving girls’ life skills through Girls’ Clubs All projects in Ethiopia introduced Girls’ Clubs which positively influenced the following areas for girls: • Self-confidence and self-efficacy • Knowledge about issues affecting their education • Aspirations and awareness of their rights • Attitudes towards gender equality • School retention and attendance • Transition into successive grades or paid employment The impact of Girls’ Clubs is outined in the GEC learning Brief, A space of their own: What have we learned about Girls’ Clubs and the GAGE Rigorous Review: Girls’ clubs, life skills programmes and girls’ wellbeing outcomes. The importance of teaching life skills is reflected in the finding of the recent GEEAP report.

Overall, the girl-focused approach adopted by the projects working in Ethiopia drove development of girls’ agency. Girls’ Clubs contributed significantly to Excelling Against the Odds project outcomes around academic achievement: the Endline Evaluation found that participating in a Girls’ Club was one of the most effective interventions for supporting school belonging, supporting girls’ confidence levels and supporting girls to attend school more often. It also reported that girls were able to engage with influential people through the Girls’ Clubs. For example, some of the Girls’ Clubs shared their views with the Parent Teachers and Students Associations as a strategy to reach the wider community. Girls’ Club peer leaders were also trained as peer educators to teach other girls life skills. Girls created billboards with their messages to address the wider community and published flyers with powerful messages in the local languages to reach families in their villages.

© ChildHope UK

Highlights

GEC COUNTRY BRIEFING MARCH 2023 / ETHIOPIA

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Improving girls’ self-esteem and self-efficacy through social-emotional learning The STAGES project has used social and emotional learning approaches to improve girls’ self-esteem and self-efficacy.This is outlined in the GEC Learning Brief, More than grades: The importance of social and emotional learning in girls’ education. Social and emotional learning, gender, inclusion and safeguarding were mainstreamed across all project training and follow-up activities. Midline Evaluation findings suggest that the high levels of socio-emotional wellbeing, as well as a positive perception of gender equality in and out of the classroom, helped girls to overcome the barriers that prevented them from continuing their education. This supports the emerging evidence on the importance of foundational learning.1 Creating safe spaces for girls In order to addressing school-related gender-based violence, GEC projects in Ethiopia used three broad intervention approaches: 1. Strengthening reporting, referral and response systems 2. Establishing safer environment strategies 3. Supporting girls’ awareness of violence The Excelling Against the Odds project worked hard to create safe spaces for girls, resulting in 96% of girls reporting feeling safe in school (Endline Evaluation). Providing safer and stimulating learning spaces was a core component of the project. This included Letter Link boxes for anonymised safeguarding reporting, sanitary corners and Girls’ Clubs. The project provided essential reassurance and visibility to the girls about the safety measures in place in schools, the continuous monitoring of safe spaces, and safeguarding reporting and response mechanisms. This work is detailed in the GEC Learning Brief, Ending violence in schools: Lessons from the Girls’ Education Challenge.

Creating sanitary corners Sanitary corners provide a safe and hygienic space for girls during menstruation and give access to sanitary pads so they no longer need to go home or stay away from school during their period.

Projects in Ethiopia established sanitary corners that provided information about menstrual health management within life skills curricula or Girls’ Clubs. Some content also challenged stigmatising attitudes or feelings of shame. This helped girls resist blaming and shaming attitudes at home or school. The Endline Evaluation found that 83% of girls supported by the Excelling Against the Odds project found it easier to access sanitary wear, compared to 53% of girls in non-project areas. The 47 sanitary corners in primary and 27 in secondary schools will continue functioning. Girls will be using reusable sanitary pads following training in how to make use reusable pads. More information can be found in the GEC Learning Brief, Supporting girls to secure their sexual and reproductive health and rights: Lessons from the GEC. Applying creativity in complex contexts Throughout implementation, the CHANGE project had to adapt to the challenges brought about by conflict and drought. This affected the project delivery in three of the four operation areas: Amhara, Afar and Borena. The project experienced high rates of migration out of GEC-supported areas (50%), high rates of student absenteeism (50%), increased rates of sexual violence (40%) and sporadic school closures, and had to reduce the number of girls supported by 26%. Subsequently, the project committed to supporting an additional 1,000 girls based in the Gedeo region, which was more stable.

Read more in our think piece Foundational Learning for All: including the most marginalised is possible, pragmatic and a priority

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Identifying and engaging with the most marginalised girls The Biruh Tesfa for All project supported the most marginalised domestic workers in Addis Ababa. The initial challenge for the project was to find these significantly marginalised girls and young women. This can be difficult as they are often ‘hidden’ within their places of work. Once they identified the girls, the next challenge was to engage them in project activities. This often required ‘permission’ from their employers, who did not always want to risk losing an employee.

If permission was granted, the final challenge was retaining the girls throughout programming.

Consistent attendance proved difficult due to employer demands, power dynamics and permissions.

The project successfully engaged the most disadvantaged and marginalised girls, which is a positive reflection of the house-to-house recruitment methods using locally recruited women leaders as mentors.

GEC COUNTRY BRIEFING MARCH 2023 / ETHIOPIA

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Changing attitudes towards girls’ education The STAGES project has focused on capacity-building training for school leadership, teachers, school-community structures (e.g. PTAs), parents and government stakeholders. It offered advocacy meetings, joint monitoring visits, partnership review meetings, coordination meetings, and school-level monthly mother and father group discussions. The Midline Evaluation reports that project interventions are leading to positive attitudinal changes towards girls and girls’ education, with the proportion of head teachers who said woreda officials were responsive to the needs of girls increasing significantly from 83% at baseline to 98% percent at midline.

Improving teaching and learning through community engagement The STAGES project has provided capacity-building training on gender-inclusive and responsive pedagogy, language competency (English and Wolaitatto) and numeracy, and pedagogical leadership to teachers, school leaders, cluster supervisors and education experts. The project has also provided coaching and mentoring to primary and secondary schools through cluster supervisors and woreda and zone education experts, to enhance the quality and effectiveness of teaching facilitation and learning.

The project opened reading corners in the 144 schools equipped with storybooks and supplementary textbooks. The Midline Evaluation reports that these interventions contributed to improving learning.

The four GEC projects operating in Ethiopia have published robust evidence to demonstrate their impact: LEAD PARTNER

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS*

ChildHope

The Excelling Against the Odds project statistically impacted Grade 8 Primary School Exam results between 2017 and 2019. Mean results indicate that whilst, on average, exam results in control schools decreased between 2017 and 2019, exam results in project schools stayed largely the same due to the project’s support. Learning assessment data and internal grade data further suggest that the project improved English literacy. Also, the project had a statistically significant impact on numeracy outcomes between 2018 and 2019.

Link Education International

Midline findings show gains in the overall aggregate literacy score for girls in Grades 6 and 8 between baseline and midline. Scores on subtasks measuring lower-level literacy skills increased significantly. However, reading comprehension scores declined except at Grade 10, where the highest aggregate reading comprehension emerged. Midline findings report substantial gains among Grade 6 girls, whose numeracy scores improved from 34.46 at baseline to 52.94 at midline, and grade 8 girls, whose scores improved from 37.47 at baseline to 57.32 at midline.

Population Council

The Biruh Tesfa for All project girls’ acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills was measured at baseline and endline using timed EGRA and EGMA tests. The Endline Evaluation reports significant improvements in literacy and numeracy between baseline and endline, including reading and performing additions. There was not a significant increase in those who were highly proficient in math problems, but there was an improvement in moderate acquisition of math problem skills.

People in Need

The Endline Evaluation of the CHANGE project suggests that girls’ literacy and numeracy skills showed improvements in most of the literacy and numeracy components. However, girls’ performance in reading comprehension and word problems has not improved.

According to the findings, 88% of the girls report a positive impact on their ability to learn and demonstrate improved literacy and numeracy skills. The girls also showed ‘improved learning interest’, ‘classroom participation’, and increased attendance.

* Evidence in the table is from an evaluation point, baseline, midline or endline carried out by an external evaluator or the implementing partner.

© People in Need

Progress and learning

GEC COUNTRY BRIEFING MARCH 2023 / ETHIOPIA

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Sustaining results Endline Evaluation findings suggest that the results achieved by the CHANGE project will be sustained by girls, parents, communities and government officials. The Evaluation reports girls being more confident and parents having improved their attitude towards girls’ education. Achievements in teaching practice made through training for teachers and head teachers are likely to be sustained, with teachers using the teaching techniques learned through the project in their regular classrooms.

The findings also showed that the project strengthened communities’ positive attitudes towards girls’ education and challenged cultural traditions and practices such as early marriage, dropout of married women from education, and gender stereotypes related to women’s roles.

The regional education bureau in Amhara and Oromia acknowledged the strengths of the Girls’ Clubs implemented by the Excelling Against the Odds project and committed to strengthening them in other schools. In addition, the project gave regional education bureau staff copies of all the life skills training modules and guidelines on how to run clubs democratically so they can scale them up.

CASE STUDY: Teacher Training – Link Education Ethiopia Link Ethiopia undertook two forms of training focused on teaching?

• The project delivered Pedagogical Leadership and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) to

teachers, head teachers, municipality officials and education experts. ​

• It used tailored content to address leadership challenges in target schools and provided CPD for

teachers on gender and inclusion.

2017 – 2024

Project delivers training through funding provided by the GEC

Activities were effective (see below), and the project was able to gain strong buy-in from project partners and the government.

Was the project's approach to training effective?

• Midline results indicated that the training, coaching, and mentoring follow-up improved classroom management, gender, inclusion, and safeguarding practices.

• Evaluations also indicate that the project displayed good, efficient and sustainable practices, such as its low costs due to working within the existing system, with the relevant partners/structures.

2022 – onwards

Intervention has been scaled to 18-non target Woredas using project and government financing

• Through a combination of project and

government funding, the project has scaled the intervention by training teachers through the Trainer of Teacher approach (ToT). Zonal level trainers cascade this training to school leaders and teachers in the 18 Woredas.

• As a result of scaling, an additional 392 primary schools and 64 secondary schools have been reached (8,466 primary school teachers and 3,716 secondary school teachers). 460,070 more children are now indirectly benefiting from the training (of which 215,417 are girls).

Additional resources: Emerging Findings: The impact of COVID-19 on girls and the Girls’ Education Challenge response. Focus on East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia) Final reflections. Achievements and lessons learned by the Excelling Against the Odds project Practice and impact brief on communities of practice and school leadership Practice and impact brief on girl-led community dialogue Practice and impact brief on teachers’ development of worksheets Case study about the CHANGE project Short film about the CHANGE project Short film about the Excelling Against the Odds project Ethiopia Country Briefing (March 2021)

Contact: uk_girls_education_challenge@pwc.com | www.girlseducationchallenge.org The Girls’ Education Challenge is a project funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (“FCDO”), formerly the Department for International Development (“DFID”), and is led and administered by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Mott MacDonald (trading as Cambridge Education), working with organisations including Nathan Associates London Ltd. and Social Development Direct Ltd. This publication has been prepared for general guidance on matters of interest only and does not constitute professional advice. You should not act upon the information contained in this publication without obtaining specific professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this publication, and, to the extent permitted by law, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the other entities managing the Girls’ Education Challenge (as listed above) do not accept or assume any liability, responsibility or duty of care for any consequences of you or anyone else acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this publication or for any decision based on it.