Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
57
community in 2006 a non-governmental organization used 21 school-boats to provide education
to children for a period of 2-3 years after which the children continue in formal education.
Interventions addressing gender
Including gender goals in national strategies and plans is a good start in achieving gender
parity. An analysis of the national education sector plans carried out for UNESCO (2015) shows
that including gender goals in the education plans both in 2000 and 2012 is associated with
significant advances in gender parity in education. This is found to be the case for a number of OIC
countries including Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Mauritania and Senegal.
Having a gender perspective or targeting girls specifically in policies and programmes led
to positive outcomes in achieving gender parity in a number of OIC countries. Having a
gender perspective in designing programmes leads to positive results as evidenced by the BRIGHT
programme implemented in Burkina Faso under which “girl friendly” schools were constructed
and both enrolment rates and test results were found to increase for girls as a result of the
program.169 Some countries targeted girls in eliminating fees and distributing cash transfers to
achieve gender parity. In Gambia secondary school fees were eliminated gradually (region by
region) for girls starting in the year 2000.170 The elimination of school fees programwhich is also
known as a girls’ scholarship program led to positive results by increasing girls’ enrolment rates
at secondary school by 5 percentage points in the regions in which the programwas implemented.
In Bangladesh, the secondary school enrolment rate of girls was only 33 percent in 1991, when
the Female Secondary School Stipend Programwas introduced. Through the program conditional
cash transfers were provided to secondary school females conditional on their attendance in
school.171 As a result of the program, the number of girls enrolled in secondary school increased
from 1.1 million in 1991 to 3.9 million in 2005.172 Since gender parity deteriorated over the years
at the expense of boys now, the program is currently turned into a stipend that targets both girls
and boys and uses a proxy means test to target the poor. 173
Interventions addressing disabilities
Most OIC countries have signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
agreeing that they will “recognize the right of persons with disabilities to education” and
“ensure an inclusive education system at all levels”.174 49 OIC countries out of 56 are State
Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, while 6 member countries
only signed but not ratified it and 2 countries still neither signed nor ratified the Convention,
namely Somalia and Tajikistan.175
169 Kazianga et al. (2013)
170 Gajigo (2016)
171 UNESCO (2012)
172 UNESCO (2012)
173 World Bank (2013)
174 United Nations (2006)
175 According to the list provided in UNICEF (2013b) and updated according to the list provided in United Nations (2017). State
Parties are the countries that formally confirmed or that made an accession or ratification of the Convention.