This is especially pronounced in poverty endemic communities. The gender parity ratio for completion of senior high school is as low as 28.8 % among the poorest quantile and at a high of 82.4% for the wealthiest quantile (Attah, 2015).
The major causes to educating girls to at least Senior High School have also been highlighted. These challenges range from poverty, boys education being more readily valued, to social norms that value early forced marriage for girls and unplanned teen pregnancies.
Improving access to education for girls, reducing attrition rates and ensuring that all the approaches necessary are deployed to focus attention on and ensure gains for girls’ education, is significant to reducing poverty.
The gains made in girls education so far, have not been easy or quick, the solution may lie in finding strategies appropriate to various localities due to pervasive and community specific social and cultural trends (Camfed, 2012).
The Rebecca Foundation works with community leaders to find localised solutions to the issues that confront low enrolment and high attrition rates of adolescent girls. Our aim is to ensure that;
• Enrolment rates for girls in poverty endemic communities increases by 50% by 2020.
• Attrition rates for adolescent girls in poverty endemic communities is reduced by 50% by 2020.
