WUNRN
______________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
6 May 2008:
Failure to offer girls the same educational opportunities as boys costs
developing countries almost US $100 billion each year in lost economic growth,
according to research by Plan.
‘Paying the
Price: The economic cost of failing to educate girls’ reveals that gender gaps
in secondary school achievement in 65 developing and former Eastern Bloc
countries cause them to miss out on annual growth of US $92 billion.
This is only
slightly less than the total US $103 billion spent annually by the
industrialised nations on overseas development aid.
Countries in
South Asia and West Africa have the worst record on educating girls to
secondary level. India alone misses out on potential economic growth worth
around US $33 billion each year.
26 countries
in sub-Saharan Africa fail to educate girls to the same standard as boys. By
contrast, just 2 countries in Latin America fail to do so.
Tom Miller,
Plan chief executive officer, said: “Education is a real investment which reaps
real rewards not just for the individual child but for society as a whole.
Failure to educate girls to the same standard as their brothers has been
rightly criticised as unjust and damaging to girls.”
Plan invests
more in education than any other programme area and works to ensure children
and adults in the communities it works in get the basic learning and life
skills they need to realise their full potential.
Last year,
Plan trained 80,799 teachers, built or rehabilitated 7,533 child-friendly
schools and worked with thousands of communities to promote girls’ education.
Download ‘Paying
the Price: The economic cost of failing to educate girls’ (1mb | 12
pages)
================================================================
To leave the list, send your request by email to: wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com.
Thank you.