Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to International Aid ONE's index of the toughest places for girls to get an education, what steps she is taking to support programmes to ensure that girls in fragile and conflict states are able to attend school.

DFID is helping to educate millions of girls in fragile and conflict affected states. The UK was a co-founder of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), a new fund to deliver quality education for children living in emergency and conflict settings. ECW investments in Chad and Ethiopia will support thousands of girls. We support a million marginalised girls to learn through the Girls’ Education Challenge programme; 70% of phase one programmes are set in fragile and conflict affected states. DFID also supports girls’ education through our bilateral programmes, such as the Girls Education in South Sudan (GESS) programme. To date, GESS has reached over 185,000 individual girls with cash transfers and 3810 schools have received grants.