Girls’ Education and Climate Change: A Game Changer

Written by Yolande Miller-Grandvaux, FHI 360 

The relationship between education, climate change and girls’ education is bi-directional. When climate shocks lead to school closures, girls are the first ones to drop out. Climate-related events prevent at least 4 million girls in low- and lower-middle-income countries from completing their education.[i]

Photo credit: MediaPort Dipendra Bhandari for FHI 360.

Yet, when girls receive 12 years of quality education, they are more likely to possess the skills needed to withstand and overcome shocks stemming from extreme weather events.[ii] In many regions, women bear a disproportionate responsibility for securing food, water, and fuel. Agriculture is the most important employment sector for women in low- and lower-middle-income countries. During periods of drought and erratic rainfall, women, as agricultural workers, work harder to secure income and resources for their families. This puts added pressure on girls, who often must leave school to help their mothers manage the increased burden. Yet, young women are extraordinarily active in finding ways to adapt to these shocks.  Whether they use technology, raise awareness, lead campaigns, or promote resilience in their communities, their deep commitment to education and adaptation strategies presents a most promising avenue.

All children and youth are affected by extreme climate events. All schools and learning spaces over the globe are affected by climate events, extreme heat, fires, hurricanes, or polluted air. However, climate change disproportionately affects populations in low-income areas and in countries that produce the least carbon footprint.

Photo credit: Shahibu Athumani, Aga Khan Foundation for FHI 360.

Are girls and young women impacted differently? Yes, because climate shocks exacerbate existing gender inequalities, posing unique threats to the livelihoods, health, and safety of women and girls and especially in places where they face restrictive gender norms. [iii].

For instance, when a household must cope with a climate-induced stressor, girls are likely to spend time on household chores, fetching wood or water further out from their home, thus perpetuating a cycle of disempowerment. Moreover, in the aftermath of climate-induced disasters, women and girls can be more vulnerable to gender-based violence.[iv]. Adolescent girls (ages 10 to 19) are more likely to experience violence and exploitation resulting from the effects of climate shocks, be forced into early marriage, and become pregnant, all of which can affect their ability to stay in school. Boys and young men are also affected by the impact of climate shocks, as they can be taken out of schools to be put at work or forced to migrate to find alternative sources of income.[v] Systemic gender inequalities exacerbate the stressors of climate shocks, extreme heat, and polluted air, making the threat of regression in access to and quality of education at all levels, especially for adolescent girls, all too real.

Medhavi, a ninth-grade student in Katmandu, Nepal, is the vice president of her school's echo club. After a heavy thunderstorm last July 22, her school was closed. There was mud, rubbish, and water everywhere. So, they lost hours when they could have been learning something! Because of climate change the heat is making it difficult to concentrate in class and students faint from the heat. Young people like her cannot play outside or take a walk.  Medhavi is determined to make her school a cleaner place. With her eco club.  She helps raise awareness about environmental change and the club teaches younger students to protect the environment who in turn teach others. The dedication of her peers and the help she receives from her teachers make her feel proud and hopeful for a better future.

Educating girls can be a game changer if some conditions are put in place and the literature has been clear about this for several decades now. But we are now facing a crisis that will not go away as our planet is changing at a rapid pace. What do we need to look at differently? 

First, we must keep the door to schooling wide open for adolescent girls: the current state of girls’ education, esp. adolescent girls, shows that nearly 1 in 5 girls are still not completing lower-secondary school and nearly 4 in 10 girls are not completing upper-secondary school.[vi] Harmful policies or cultural practices often prevent girls from returning to school after pregnancy, time away for domestic duties, recovering from a disaster, or even following a protracted school closure. Yet an unprecedented six hundred million adolescent girls are coming of age. [vii]The push for supporting access to education for them cannot stop.

Second, educated adolescent girls can affect behavior, especially when it comes to thinking how to adapt to climate change. In fact, education is the single strongest predictor of climate change awareness. One study goes as far as to claim that girls’ secondary education is the most important socioeconomic determinant in reducing vulnerability to climate change.[viii]  If the share of women receiving a lower secondary education increased from 30% to 70%, this could result in a 60% lower death toll from extreme weather events by 2050 [ix], and countries would suffer far fewer economic losses.[x] Educating girls means more than just sending them to school. It means that access to clean water and safe toilets will be possible; that young women can go and stay in school without the risk of being harassed or raped; that household chores can be managed so they can do their homework; that teachers and school administrators respect and empower them to think critically and make informed decisions. Let’s remember that empowering young women to play a role in climate adaptation must account for harmful gender dynamics; ensure that boys and men are engaged; all students become equal and safe partners both in climate literacy and in how to mitigate and adapt to climate shocks and ongoing stressors.

Third, education is not just about foundational literacy. It is key in inculcating the skills, values, behavior, critical thinking, and creativity needed for tackling new problems and harnessing the strength of a community. Education about climate change goes beyond knowledge of climate events. It extends to understanding the premises of climate justice, which naturally includes gender equality.  When secondary school students in Fiji learn from their textbooks, their teachers and their pedagogical practices, and the indigenous knowledge surrounding them about conservation of the coral reeves that are disappearing because of warming ocean temperatures, it illustrates how education and climate action also lead to climate justice and in turn equality.

The nexus between education, gender and climate change is complex, multifaceted, and yet grossly misunderstood or unknown. It is time to act for keeping adolescent girls in school, for learning how to adapt to climate change, and for helping young women and men become safe and educated actors in an ever-changing world.

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[i] Global Partnership for Education. Toward Climate-Smart Education Systems: A 7-Dimension Framework for Action. Global Partnership for Education, 2023. Working Paper, Washington DC.

[ii]  Malala Fund. A Greener Fairer Future: Why Leaders Need to Invest in Climate and Girls’ Education. 2021.

[iii]  Fruttero, Anna, Daniel Halim, Chiara Broccolini, Bernardo Coelho, Horace Gninafon, and Noël Muller. 2023. "Gendered Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Weather Shocks." Policy Research Working Papers 10442. © World Bank, Washington, DC.

[iv] Malivel, G., S. Huyer, and J. Seager. 2014. "Climate Change and Gender-Based Violence: Overview of Current Research." AICCRA Working Paperno.16. Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA). p.132.

[v]  Fruttero, Anna, Daniel Halim, Chiara Broccolini, Bernardo Coelho, Horace Gninafon, and Noël Muller. 2023. "Gendered Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Weather Shocks." Policy Research Working Papers 10442. © World Bank, Washington, DC.

[vi] UNICEF. 2024. Adolescent Girls: The Investment Case. https://www.unicef.org/documents/adolescent-girls-investment-case

[vii] UNICEF. "6 Ways the Lives of Girls Are Different Today." Accessed October 30, 2024. [https://data.unicef.org/data-for-action/6-ways-the-lives-of-girls-are-different-today/#:~:text=But%20this%20means%20that%20worldwide,numbers%20are%20even%20more%20dismal]

[viii]  Muttarak, Raya, and Wolfgang Lutz. "Is Education a Key to Reducing Vulnerability to Natural Disasters and Hence Unavoidable Climate Change?" Ecology and Society 19, no. 1 (2014). 

[ix] E Ehlers, Suzanne, Safeena Husain, Amel Karboul, Christina Kwauk, Sibley Lovett, Lane McBride, Max McCabe, Liesbet Steer, and Nithya Vaduganathan. Education for Climate Action. The Education Commission, 2022.

[x] Brian Blankespoor, Brian, et al. 2010. "The Economics of Adaptation to Extreme Weather Events in Developing Countries." CGD Working Paper 198. Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development. 

The Power of Locally Led Inclusive Education for People with Disabilities

Written by Jannae Bulat and Carmen Strigel (RTI International)

Vision screening at a school in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Photo credit: USAID/Tanzania Hesabu na Elimu Jumuishi (Arithmetic and Inclusive Education) Activity

In an overcrowded classroom in Uganda, Lydia, a first-grade teacher, slowly makes her way through a crowded room of 150 students who are all sitting on the floor. She is tasked with providing quality instruction for all of them, including those with disabilities. But how can she do this when she can barely walk through the room, has few teaching materials, and has never received training on inclusive instruction? 

This is the challenge that many teachers in low-income countries face. With under-resourced schools and large numbers of students with varying abilities in their classes, teachers often find themselves underprepared and ill-equipped to provide the level of quality and individualized instruction needed to help all their students thrive.

The realities faced by Lydia and many others like her underscore the need for broad adoption of and support for inclusive education. Countries around the world largely share the aspiration to provide quality, inclusive education to all children regardless of ability. However, many struggle with how best to do so for the most vulnerable children and their families, and at the most local level. 

Education that is truly inclusive of children with disabilities must be designed in partnership with those children, their families, and the communities that surround them. With an estimated 15 percent of the world’s population having a disability, people with disabilities—children included— are not a fringe group and cannot be ignored if a country wants to achieve its economic and social goals. In this blog post, we explore the topic of inclusive education for children with disabilities and how implementing partners, particularly international organizations, need to collaborate with local partners to realize it. 

What is Inclusive Education? 

Inclusive education provides quality education for all students, regardless of ability, and “allows students of all backgrounds to learn and grow side by side, to the benefit of all” (UNICEF). It encompasses disability inclusion, recognizing that students’ needs vary and that finding ways to meet these needs is essential to building an informed, educated, and productive citizenry. 

Inclusive education systems recognize the rights and dignity of all individuals, ensuring no one is left behind. These systems set expectations and provide guidance for how to adjust education delivery to maximize learning outcomes for students with diagnosed disabilities, as well as those who are struggling but have not been diagnosed as having a disability. 

Inclusive education embraces classroom management strategies that are grounded in Universal Design for Learning and social inclusion best practices, allowing students to be taught in and to respond in ways that are most appropriate for them. This can include providing books in large print or, as RTI has done in Cambodia, giving teachers innovative tools, such as sensory stories, which include things to do, touch, smell, hold, or listen to, and make learning more engaging for all students, particularly those with disabilities.

What Are Some Examples of Inclusive Education? 

At the systems level, inclusive education ensures that all students can be screened for vision, hearing, and learning disabilities and that formal assessments—such as end-of-grade evaluations that determine progression to the next grade—are equitable and accessible for all students. Inclusive education systems also ensure that physical school environments allow all students to move freely and engage in all activities both in and out of the classroom. This goes beyond installing ramps, and includes ensuring classrooms, bathrooms, and other structures are accessible for children with limited mobility. 

At the school and classroom levels, adaptive strategies and assistive technologies can be used in support of inclusive education. In Ethiopia, from 2016 to 2017, READ TA: the Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed—Technical Assistance project worked with local associations for the blind, deaf, and persons with disabilities to identify and implement smartphone-based screening tools for vision and hearing impairment, and helped the project tailor tools and support to meet the needs of children with disabilities. Since then, assessment and instructional support tools, like RTI’s Tangerine:Teach, have been helping teachers identify students who are struggling and provide feedback on teaching strategies to address their students’ learning needs. 

How Can Families and Communities Be Engaged to Enhance Inclusive Education? 

Inclusive education systems must partner with local leaders, parents, and families to reduce the stigma that often surrounds disability and to raise awareness that children with disabilities need to attend school. In Bangladesh, for example, through the USAID Shobai Miley Shikhi (“Everyone Learns Together”) project, RTI has trained a cadre of school community facilitators to implement a campaign designed to foster inclusive education through parent meetings, community courtyard meetings, and inclusion fairs.

Community advocacy should also engage community members directly as resource providers. For example, through the USAID All Children Learning project in Cambodia, RTI worked with the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport in developing a national guide for screening and referrals—a tool that  civil society organizations can use to screen children for disabilities and refer them for additional testing and support when it is needed. 

RTI also trained local volunteers as Cambodian Sign Language (CSL) coaches, who then taught CSL to children who are deaf. These volunteers helped create peer support groups that served as resources for families with children that have developmental delays and disabilities. By working with these community members, the project was able to draw directly on existing capacity with the aim of co-creating lasting solutions. 

How Can Implementing Partners Support Locally Led Inclusive Education for Children With Disabilities? 

Truly inclusive education is informed by local needs and voices, designed with local stakeholders, and implemented using sound local solutions. As implementing partners, we need to work to understand and incorporate local dynamics and perspectives. This should include listening to the voices of individuals with disabilities to identify needs; partnering with local organizations and stakeholders that serve people with disabilities in decision-making, design, implementation, and monitoring; providing the tools, resources, and capacity building they require; and learning from and with them.

Further, implementing partners can take the following steps to ensure that inclusive education initiatives are locally led: 

• Make disability inclusion a cross-cutting theme across activities.

• Recognize and tap the expertise of local people with disabilities and organizations of people with disabilities. 

• Create a level playing field in recruiting staff and consultants, to intentionally encourage people with disabilities to apply and to explicitly remove barriers that prevent them from doing so. 

• Be aware of intersectionality, recognizing how disability intersects with other forms of marginalization and taking care to do no harm to any population group.

• Budget for inclusion, including for accommodations and to compensate local stakeholders and organizations for their time. 

• Ensure that all communications—internal and external—are respectful of people with disabilities and tailored to meet their needs. 

The Future of Inclusive Education Systems & Locally Led Development      

Inclusive education systems should be, at their core, locally led. Inclusion is most powerful when those who are traditionally excluded are at the forefront of defining their own challenges and identifying and helping implement solutions. And inclusive education interventions are most effective when they work with children, their families, and the local organizations that support them. 

In the effort to provide quality inclusive education globally, locally led development is not just an aspiration but an imperative, and it must begin with and be led by people with disabilities. By embracing the mantra of “nothing about us without us” and prioritizing their voices and experiences, we can help to ensure that development efforts are not only more appropriate and respectful but also more effective.

Learn more about RTI’s commitment to locally led development and our work in international education.

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Disclaimer: This piece was written by Jennae Bulat (Senior Director, Teaching and Learning) and Carmen Strigel (Senior Director, Education Technology) to share perspectives on a topic of interest. Expression of opinions within are those of the author or authors.

Measuring What We Treasure: Assessment Practices for Early Childhood Care and Education

Written by USAID and BEC’s Early Childhood Education (ECE) Working Group

Photo Credit: Patricia Esteve and RTI

Meheret, a 5-year-old girl from the Somali Region in Ethiopia, walked to a shaded, quiet place outside her Early Learning Center. There, she discovered a colorful mat, books, and other play materials, including blocks. An assessor asks Meheret about shapes and numbers and her friends. Before long, she laughs as she hops on one foot. What do these activities have in common?

Meheret participated in an early childhood care and education (ECCE) assessment. An assessor asked standardized, child-friendly questions to measure Meheret’s emergent literacy and math skills, social and emotional development, and motor skills. Alongside thousands of other young children in Ethiopia, Meheret demonstrates the abilities she has developed throughout the school year. Policy makers, government officials, and Ministries of Education and Health find this data crucial to track progress towards early childhood goals nationally, and report internationally on contributions towards key strategic documents, such as the Advancing Protection and Care for Children in Adversity: A U.S. Government Strategy for Children to Thrive (2024–2029) (USG Thrive Strategy). The USG Thrive Strategy aims to integrate Early Childhood Development (ECD) interventions, including ECCE, into foreign assistance programs to support children from vulnerable groups and their families. Furthermore, the 2018 USAID Education Policy prioritizes, “sustained, measurable improvements in learning outcomes and skills development,” including at the pre-primary level. The current USG Strategy on International Basic Education (2024-2029) calls for government activities across the education continuum to, “generate and use data and evidence to drive decision-making and investments.” The early childhood goals are clear, but the question remains–how do we track progress to achieve these goals?

This September, USAID launched a new standard ECCE indicator, marking the first inclusion of a learning outcome indicator at the pre-primary level among USAID standard indicators. This significant achievement for young children’s education enhances the visibility of ECCE goals and the progress towards their achievement on a global level. Specifically, it means that learning outcomes for young children benefiting from USAID support will be reported to Congress of the United States annually.

Indicator ES.1.1-1, “Average early learning skills score for pre-primary learners targeted for USG assistance,” is meant to capture improvements in learning and educational outcomes, including emergent literacy and math skills, social and emotional skills, and motor skills. Dr. Abbie Raikes, founder of ECD Measure explains, “We’ve learned through Together for Early Childhood Evidence, that government and civil society leaders [in the Africa region] are eager to have reliable data on early child development to inform investments and programs. USAID’s effort to collect data on young children’s learning and development is a great step forward in building data-driven early childhood systems.”

IDELA assessment of Accelerated School Readiness (ASR) learner Samira Ahmed at Galma Pre-Primary School in Sawena Arda Woreda, Oromia Region.

Photo Credit: Ahmed Mohammed a CDA-ODA co-facilitator at Galma School

Tools for Measuring Progress and Impact

USAID implementing partners have flexibility in how to measure the indicator as long as they use an age-appropriate assessment with satisfactory psychometric validity, reliability, and fairness.

When choosing a tool, implementers can benefit from expert guidance from organizations such as USAID, ECD Measure, the World Bank, and the IDELA Network Community of Practice.

Implementing partners can use a variety of relevant tools to measure the indicator including the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) tool from Save the Children, the World Bank’s AIM-ECD (Anchor Items for the Measurement of Early Childhood Development) and MELQO, as well as national assessment tools like the South Africa’s Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM).

How Can We Measure the Progress of All Children?

Tools like IDELA, AIM-ECD, MELQO, and ELOM help measure programming contributions towards early learning and development of children, but concerted efforts are required to ensure inclusive measurement and capture and report the progress of all children.

Measurement efforts often exclude three groups of young children: those using a language other than the language of instruction, children with disabilities, and those affected by conflict and crisis. By taking the context and needs of different populations of children into account, we can make measurement approaches more inclusive.

1: Contextualize for Language of Instruction

Measuring early childhood development and learning requires robust tools adapted for diverse contexts, such as multilingual communities. Assessment tools must be sensitive to both the language of instruction and the home language of the child. To measure the impact of the kindergarten component of the USAID’s activity Renforcement de la Lecture Initiale pour Tous (RELIT) in Senegal, RTI responded to the multilingual aspect of the Senegalese education ecosystem. “To match the languages of instruction, we translated the assessment tool into five languages,” said Dr. Nell O’Donnell Weber, education research analyst at RTI. “It was a challenge to find data collectors with the required qualifications: bilingual in French and one of languages of instruction, the temperament to work with young children, the will to travel to remote regions.”

Similar language considerations occurred in Ethiopia, where the MELQO tools were adapted to the Ethiopian context, including translating them in six local languages from six regional states. The USAID/LEGO Foundation funded Childhood Development Activity (CDA) has been supporting the Ethiopian Education Assessment and Examinations Services to apply MELQO tools. An upcoming context assessment of the CDA activity will include MELQO tools to provide insights into pre-primary settings and children’s development in conflict- and drought-affected regions.

2: Contextualize for Children with Disabilities

Measurement efforts often exclude children with disabilities because they are not in school, have not received a formal diagnosis, or the assessment lacks accommodations. For example, if Meheret used a wheelchair, would she be excluded from an assessment simply because she could not hop and engage with the items related to the physical development domain?

An IDELA Community of Practice survey revealed that only half of the community users had ever used its tool for assessing children with disabilities. “Challenges to including children with disabilities in assessments is a common and critical issue that we have been trying to address” explained Filipa De Castro, Senior Advisor for Research at Save the Children. “We have developed a set of accommodations for IDELA tailored for different types of disabilities, such as allowing extra time for the child to answer, adapting testing items, or materials to enable children to participate in certain tasks.” With reasonable ECCE assessment accommodations, practitioners can track learning outcomes for all young children, including those with disabilities.

3: Contextualize for Conflict and Crisis Settings

UNICEF estimates 400 million children live in areas affected by conflict and crisis. In protracted crises, which can last between 10 and 26 years, young children may spend the entirety of their childhoods in refugee camps. Conflict and crisis contexts often exhibit data sensitivity, as people and systems may use information to discriminate, overlook, or oppress specific identity groups. In these contexts, data needs must be balanced with ensuring safety of children and their caregivers. USAID uses these important considerations to guide work in early childhood care and education. In Fiscal Year 2022, USAID’s implementing partners advanced pre-primary education in 31 countries, of which 11 experience conflict and crisis.

Next Steps

An indicator is only the first step of many in tracking progress towards global ECCE goals. It provides an opportunity for implementers, governments, donor and international agencies, and all stakeholders in the ECCE sub-sector to develop relevant guidance to move through the necessary tool selection, contextualization, adaptation, methodology design, application, and reporting. For more information on USAID’s ECCE indicator, register for the USAID Young Learners, Big Impact: Measuring Learning Outcomes in Early Childhood Education webinar on October 31, 2024 here.

This blog was co-authored by USAID and the Basic Education Coalition (BEC) Early Childhood Education (ECE) Working Group, writers include: Kate Anderson, Unbounded Associates; Filipa de Castro, Save the Children; Cynthia Koons, Save the Children; MaryFaith Mount-Cors, EdIntersect; Nell O’Donnell Weber, RTI; and Susan Werner, BEC ECE WG Chair. 

Associated Resource(s): Fiscal Year 2024 Compendium of Standard PIRS for Education Programming