On January 31, UNESCO’s International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa and the African Union’s International Centre for Girls’ and Women’s Education in Africa jointly released the first Africa Teachers Report (conference edition) at an event organized by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The report focuses on the need to invest in girls’ education and end child marriage, and the role of teachers and school leaders in doing so. It is part of a new series published with support from the European Union under its Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa.

The report relies on a wide range of datasets to make a simple policy argument, an approach likely relevant as UNESCO organizes this week the first Conference on Education Data and Statistics.

The conference aims to establish an international community of practice of education statisticians to reach consensus on measurement issues related to SDG 4 and improve the underlying data. Another objective is to discuss the potential impact of technology on a wide range of education statistics and data, including administrative, household survey, learning assessment, teacher and expenditure data.

Quality and timely data on education remain scarce in many African countries. But this does not mean that one cannot piece together policy arguments from the available data that often remain underused.

The first Africa Teachers Report is entitled “Educating Girls and Ending Child marriage in Africa: Investment Case and the Role of Teachers and School Leaders.” It relies on multiple household surveys, including Demographic and Health Surveys; student assessment data such as PASEC; national-level data such as the Changing Wealth of Nations; online surveys of teachers and school leaders, including surveys conducted for a diagnostic of professional standards and competencies for teachers in West Africa; administrative and policy data; and qualitative data from interviews.

Using data to improve education outcomes for girls

The first part of the report updates and expands for a much larger number of countries a previous investment case at the World Bank on educating girls and ending child marriage that was co-funded by the Global Partnership for Education.

The second part looks at the role of teachers and school leaders in improving learning outcomes and educational attainment for girls.

While the literature emphasizes economic incentives for adolescent girls to remain in school, the report notes that:

• Lack of learning is a key factor leading to drop-out in primary and lower-secondary school;
• Teachers and school leaders are key to improving learning, but new approaches are needed for pedagogy in the classroom and for training teachers and school leaders; and
• Nationally, professional standards and competencies for teachers and school leaders are also required.

Targeted interventions for adolescent girls are needed, but they often reach only a small share of girls still in school at that age; by contrast, improving foundational learning would benefit a larger share of girls (and boys) and could also make sense from a cost-benefit point of view.

Key findings from the report

The second part of the report tests the validity of this argument focusing on West Africa, a region with low educational attainment and high rates of child marriage, although findings are also relevant for other regions.

Key findings include the following:

• According to parental responses to household surveys, lack of learning in school for their children accounts for over 40% of girls and boys dropping out of primary school (data for 10 francophone countries). It also accounts for more than a third of students dropping out at the lower secondary level. Improving learning could therefore increase educational attainment substantially for girls and boys alike.
• To improve learning, reviews from impact evaluations and analysis of student assessment data such as PASEC suggest that teachers and school leaders are key. Yet new approaches are needed for professional development, including through structured pedagogy and training emphasizing practice. Teachers must also be better educated: household surveys for francophone countries suggest that only one-third of teachers in primary schools have a post-secondary diploma.
• Female teachers and especially school leaders improve student learning according to PASEC and other data. Yet less than a fifth of teachers at the secondary level are women in many countries. The proportion of female school leaders is also low. Better opportunities must be given to women teachers and school leaders, which would bring additional benefits as women often remain in teaching for a longer time.
• Better professional standards and competencies frameworks are also needed for teachers and school leaders, including to make the profession more attractive and gender-sensitive. Many countries have not yet treated teaching as a career and lack clear definitions of competencies needed at different levels. Guidance for Member States is available from the African Union to strengthen the profession, as argued in a separate report by UNESCO IICBA.
• Making the teaching profession more attractive may require better wages and benefits in some (but not all) countries, especially for women who often lag men in pay. But programs to increase teacher job satisfaction matter too. This includes mental health and psycho-social support for teachers, especially in contexts of emergencies. Teachers must also be trained in gender-responsive pedagogy for schools to be welcoming for girls and to end gender-based violence.

To conclude, the first Africa Teachers Report relies on a wide range of data to make the argument that investing in teachers and school leaders is key to improve educational opportunities for girls and end child marriage, thereby also reducing gender inequality in and through education.

In the context of the first UNESCO Conference on Education Data and Statistics, an implicit message of the report is that while there is a clear need to improve education data and statistics especially in Africa, efforts are also needed to support African researchers and technical staff in ministries of education in using the available data more systematically to inform policy.