Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
21
Interventions addressing location
Prioritizing areas that are disadvantaged in education planning and policymaking could
lead to improved outcomes. In general rural areas have a greater likelihood to lack schools or
the schools there could lack teaching materials. In this respect in China reaching “rural, remote,
poor and minority areas” is set as the first priority of the Ministry of Education.83 This kind of
top level targeting improves the effectiveness of allocation of resources. For instance, in Ethiopia
under the national strategy for education, since 1997, 85 percent of the schools built were built
in rural areas in the country.84
In general schools in rural areas or disadvantaged regions also lack necessary number of trained
teachers. Providing incentives for teachers to serve in disadvantaged locations is a good remedy
for this problem. In Republic of Korea, teachers serving in schools in disadvantaged areas receive
a number of benefits which led to having 77 percent of teachers having a university degree in
the villages as opposed to 32 percent of teachers in the cities. 85
Interventions addressing gender
To improve girls’ education outcomes it is necessary to make national plans and policies
take into account gender. Analysis of education sector plans carried out for preparing
UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report for 2015 points out that countries that put gender goals in
their national plans in 2000 and 2012 made greater gains in decreasing gender gaps in
education.86 For instance countries like Ethiopia and Morocco which are among the countries
decreasing gender gaps in school enrolment significantly, specifically put a gender perspective
on their national plans.87
While girls are more likely to encounter barriers to participate in education, kinds of
interventions that improve their attendance are generally the ones that improve
educational outcomes of every child. A systematic review on girls’ education shows that many
interventions such as conditional and unconditional cash transfers, provision of additional
schools, provision of in-kind transfers such as deworming and school feeding as well as more
“soft” approaches like training teachers on gender equality and involvement of women in school
governance and community leadership were found to improve girls’ education outcomes. 88
Making schools closer or providing public transportation could improve education
outcomes of every child and specifically education outcomes of girls. Building schools in
the villages was found to improve enrolment of girls much more than boys in Afghanistan where
the gender gap was eliminated in villages that the school were constructed.89 Another option
could be to provide children an option for easier transportation to school. In this respect an
83 (OECD, 2016b)
84 (UNESCO, 2010)
85 (UNESCO, 2015)
86 (UNESCO, 2015)
87 (UNESCO, 2015)
88 (Unterhalter et al., 2014)
89 (Burde & Linden, 2013)