Interactive data visualizations
July 2022
There are many options, and new pathways to support the most marginalised, especially adolescent girls, to complete secondary (or equivalent) education and improve their lives and the lives of others
The SGD4 target of free, inclusive, and quality secondary education for all by 2030 remains a distant goal for many low- and middle-income countries. While many more children are now coming through primary schools, for hundreds of millions of children traditional secondary schools are still out of reach. Thus, children are missing out on their right to 12 years of education. This is a lost opportunity for each child and young person as well as their wider communities as investing in secondary education, particularly adolescent girls’ secondary education, has huge positive externalities.
There are nearly 200 million lower and upper secondary age adolescent children out of school1, and it is expected that this number will have increased as a result of the impact of COVID-19 school closures. Household data shows that only about half of adolescents aged 15-17 (53%) reach upper secondary2. The rest have been held back or dropped out. Adolescent girls are particularly disadvantaged and by the age of 20-24, they are much more likely to be out of employment or education than young men in all countries where data are available.
If we are going to meet the promise of SDG4 and “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, there needs to be an unprecedented scale-up of options for secondary education, and these need to include alternative and flexible paths.
The magnitude of need requires us to think differently about how best to support adolescent girls and boys to realise their potential. It is not as simple as following the traditional path – this doesn’t work for many students, particularly those who are the first generation to go to secondary schools. It will require countries to provide a wider range of learning opportunities to cater for students from different backgrounds who have different needs. Critically, it requires opportunities that are not lower status than formal routes but seen as equivalent by higher education institutions and employers.
The maps show the Gender Parity Index (GPI) for need of MFPs (i.e. the ratio between the number of girls and the number of boys in need) for selected low- and middle income countries. A GPI equal to 1 indicates a similar degree of need for both boys and girls. A GPI greater than 1 means that there are more girls than boys in need and a GPI below 1 indicates that there are more boys than girls in need.
The final map shows the potential benefits of investing in MFPs. For each country, we present the increased earnings accrued if all upper secondary age adolescents complete 12 years of education (or equivalent) and work for 40 years. We also present the increased earnings in terms of the countries' GDP to give a better idea of the magnitude of these figures.
Explore the dataOut-of-school adolescents are disproportionally in fragile countries, countries affected by conflict, or climate crisis. They face multiple challenges, including financial constraints, a lack of access to schools, harmful social norms, poor quality provision of education and limited opportunities for work. Disabilities are significant barriers to secondary education.
In many places adolescent girls are particularly disadvantaged, with a range of gender norms and gendered barriers – including child marriage, expectation of fulfilling household duties, or expulsion due to pregnancy – leading to an early end of education every year. Even when girls progress to secondary, these norms can mean lower entry rates into further education and/or the labour force inhibiting their potential. A lack of safety in and around schools also leads to lower attendance and higher dropout rates for girls at higher levels.
Poverty, social exclusion and gender norms, including harmful masculinities, also impacting boys’ access to education; many drop-out early to join the labour force, but into low-skilled occupations and in poor conditions. This requires urgent policy attention and a gender transformative design of education, enabling girls, boys and gender diverse children to succeed.
Each context and challenge require different solutions; adolescents in poverty simply cannot afford fees or the other indirect costs of education and many need to work to make ends meet. Work is mostly incompatible with school timetables, increasing absenteeism and the risk of dropping out. Those living in remote and rural areas walk miles to often overcrowded schools. Given the need for specialist teachers, many countries can’t afford to provide traditional schools within walking distance. For these children, community-based education can be a lifeline.
Many children are discouraged by low quality education and narrowly focused curricula that was designed to prepare them for tertiary education in specific professional fields. An academic path that lacks relevance for their different life paths and that doesn’t encourage the development of critical transferable and labour market skills is causing millions of adolescents to disengage from education. Maintaining learners’ interest and addressing disengagement and drop out requires diverse learning options beyond the linear academic pathway.
Many projects have tried to solve these issues and have been successful on a small scale (see selected case studies below). However, solving them at scale means taking bold steps to reimagine secondary education as a system that includes many pathways; pathways that provide relevant knowledge and skills and are available for all children and adolescents – to keep those in school from dropping out, and to get those who have dropped out back in and to stay in.
Instead of a linear “primary to secondary to tertiary” pathway, modern systems are increasingly offering Multiple and Flexible Pathways (MFPs) to better suit children and adolescents’ needs.
The pathways comprise a wider range of learning programmes, that are part of both the formal and non-formal education system. As they respond to unique needs, they vary depending on the context, take different forms, have different objectives, provide different content, and lead to different learning outcomes.
Bridging Programmes
Short-term courses focused on language proficiency and preparation for enrolment in the education system of a new context.
Catch-up Programmes
Short-term transitional programmes for adolescents who have interrupted their education (upper primary or lower secondary).
Accelerated Learning Programmes
Essential knowledge and skills from primary and/ or lower secondary curricula are covered in an accelerated timeframe.
Different modalities of secondary education delivery
Adapted secondary education curricula to flexible timeframes and uses pedagogies and materials requiring fewer teachers.
Technical and vocational education and training
Education, training and skills development related to multiple occupational fields, production, services and livelihoods. Can take place at secondary, post-secondary and tertiary levels
Apprenticeships
Usually combines on-the-job training and work experience with institution-based training and can be regulated by law or custom
Increasingly countries are integrating the development of adolescents’ socio-emotional/life skills into their education systems. This can be through the core curriculum or additional programmes after school, and/or in alternative pathways. Foundational skills, health and wellbeing, personal empowerment, career and financial management are all important and can be learned in a variety of contexts including youth centres, health clinics, and adult learning centres, as well as in schools. A system where all pathways promote soft and hard skills can provide learners with more opportunities to receive an education that fits their needs and the needs of employers and communities.
Despite many countries offering different pathways, they are often considered lower status as compared to the main academic pathway. They are under-resourced, with policy attention and budgeting tending to treat them as add-ons or short-term fixes.
Given their diverse nature, MFP programmes are run by several Ministries – including education, labour, health, youth, social affairs, women’s affairs and agriculture – and are implemented by a wide array of government, NGO and private sector providers. This mix can be a benefit – as it brings cross-sectoral knowledge and expertise in design and implementation – but can be a challenge as it limits consistency and means linking to formal education qualifications is often overlooked. Accreditation is key to students being able to re-enter school or show-off their knowledge – with no formal accreditation they are not considered to have proper qualifications by employers. To guarantee these programmes are effective and allow adolescents to continue their education even after dropping out of schools, countries need to introduce the right policies, make MFPs part of a well-integrated system and ensure MFPs exist for the children; they ought to allow for entry and re-entry, stronger linkages between different pathways of learning and formal and non-formal structures, and recognition, validation and accreditation of knowledge and skills acquired through non-formal and informal education.
System integration requires an investment in a coherent curriculum that clearly defines how different pathways are part of a wider education system. This will allow countries to issue qualifications that will help adolescents graduating from these programmes to enter the labour market. Elevating the value of all learning creates an incentive for children who have dropped out to enrol. To effectively integrate these pathways into the system countries will also have to allocate formal budget lines to MFPs following a cross-sectoral approach - this will require one line ministry to manage the programme and allow for transparent and equitable budgets. Finally, the pathways should also be integrated into planning and sector monitoring with unified data management systems expanded to include all learning options, not just school censuses. This will allow a full review of the education sector, identifying those at risk of dropping out or out of school, developing tailored learning provisions to the needs of the most marginalised, and help plan for future expansion.
How the integration occurs will ultimately depend on the context – with fragile countries often operating MFPs out of necessity (due to interuptions to normal schooling) and then transitioning from emergency provision to sector-wide delivery. Here, integration can be part of the sectoral planning processes, capitalising on the experience in providing education for all.
If we can find alternative pathways that work for all children, we can help children and young people worldwide. Even within the upper secondary school age cohort, we can help nearly 126 million children if we invest in multiple and flexible pathways.
This is not just the right thing to do, but also a great investment. Getting all these upper secondary age children in need to obtain the equivalent of twelve years education would mean they increase their wages to the levels of those with secondary education - over their lifetime, this investment can bring an additional 2 trillion US dollars in extra salaries4.
And it’s not just money - education can provide multiple benefits to individuals and societies. As wages are taxed, this will impact government revenue generation and increase the available public budget, by providing 287 billion dollars of government revenue.
If the alternative pathways are structured to provide a higher quality of education, then this can improve countries Learning Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS)5. As quality education leads to fewer girls being married early by allowing them to pursue opportunities, investing in alternative pathways could prevent 12 million girls from early marriage and can improve the health condition of 8 million.
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