Special report on girls' education - Continued II

Getting parents to send their girls to school was one thing; keeping them there was another. Girls tended to have higher dropout rates than boys, said Isse. At times, this resulted from early marriages, especially in the countryside. Moreover, there was much less tolerance for failure among girls than among boys. Girls who performed badly in class, especially in secondary school, tended to be withdrawn more quickly by their parents, he added. High demands are thus placed on girls, so much so that at the secondary school final examination, the baccalaureat, they outshine their male counterparts. "For the past two years, the first places at the baccalaureat have gone to girls," Isse said. "This surprises people, but these are girls who have gone through a rigorous selection." OTHER LIMITING FACTORS Another challenge facing Djibouti’s education sector is a dire shortage of textbooks, with some schools having on average only one book per subject for every four pupils, according to sources in the sector. Providing textbooks, increasing the number of schools and classrooms in the country, making education more affordable, improving its quality and revamping teacher training are among the priorities the government has set itself, according to Education Minister Abdi Ibrahim Absieh.

Many people in the Djibouti hinterland lead nomadic lives

Its targets include increasing the number of classrooms by 575 between 2001 and 2005. About three-quarters of the new classrooms have already been built and equipped. UN agencies are also involved in efforts to support education for girls. INCENTIVES AS STIMULUS A WFP programme officer, Amadou Bocoum, told IRIN that his agency supported 44 schools with 11,539 pupils, of whom 45 percent were girls. It provided cooked meals - breakfast and lunch - for schoolchildren, and incentives for parents to send their girls to school. "For example, if a girl goes to school for an entire month, we give her a tin of edible oil to take home," he said. Field officers also go from door to door to explain to parents the advantages of educating their daughters. "We support girls from class three to six, because that’s where we’ve noticed the biggest dropout rate," Bocoum said. "Since we started giving the oil [at the beginning of the 2002-2003 academic year], attendance has been regular." A one-year UNICEF project scheduled to begin this month is also aimed at increasing the number of girls in school and reducing the dropout rate. It will complement an ongoing programme begun in 2001-2002 by UNICEF in conjunction with the government seeking to ensure that conditions in schools are conducive to the development of the full potential of girls and boys. Under the Child-Friendly Schools programme, schools compete for prizes awarded for their performance in areas such as availability of textbooks, the quality of education provided, the conditions under which children learn, the commitment of teachers, and sanitary facilities and the school’s surroundings. Rewards range from computers and television/video sets to dictionaries and school supplies. "This has created a great deal of emulation by schools and generated much interest among teachers, as well as parents and children, some of whom have been asking for their schools to be included," said a UNICEF programme officer, Roger Botralahy. This year, he said, prizes would also be given to students of winning schools. UNICEF has sought funding for another project that aims to increase gross primary enrolment from 43,000 this year to 52,000 in 2005-2006 and reduce the dropout rate in the final year of primary school from about 30 percent to 20 percent. The project would provide students with school supplies such as slates, pens, pencils, notebooks, teachers would be given teaching manuals, and just under 200,000 textbooks would be distributed to schools between 2004 and 2006. LINKS Text of the Millenium Declaration: www.un.org For more on the Millenium Goals: www.developmentgoals.org State of the World’s Children Report 2004: www.unicef.org State of the World’s Children Report 2004 []: www.unicef.org.uk