Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, which objectives her Department is seeking to achieve by investing in girls’ education in developing countries.

In the three years from 2015 to 2018 DFID supported at least 5.6 million girls to gain a decent education. The objective of our investment is to support girls to attend school, learn whilst they are there, and help ensure the critical transition from primary to secondary education. Through this work we are supporting girls to achieve basic literacy and numeracy and are helping to equip them with the skills they need to succeed in jobs of the future.

Evidence for the benefits of investment in girls’ education includes:

• An extra year of primary schooling for girls can increase their wages by 10-20%, most of which is likely to be reinvested in her family and community.
• A World Bank study found that every year of secondary school education is correlated with an 18% increase in a girls’ future earning power.
• Education helps to prevent early marriage and early pregnancy - girls with no education are 3 times as likely to marry by 18 as those with a secondary or higher education.
• If all girls completed primary school in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, the number of girls getting married by age 15 would fall by 14%; with secondary education, 64% fewer girls would get married.
• A UNICEF study from Bangladesh attributes the halving of the Maternal Mortality Rates from 1990 to 2008 to the increased enrolment of girls in secondary education.

We believe that investing in educating girls is both the right and the smart thing to do, both socially and economically. Our work is guided by DFID’s 2018 Education Policy – Get Children Learning. This sets out how educating girls can: support better health choices, boost earnings, build social cohesion and help institutions and public services work better.