4. Changes in Girls’ Transition Outcomes

Box 4: Key findings

1. More than 9 out of 10 re-contacted girls progressed at least one grade level between baseline and midline,87 with only five per cent of girls repeating a grade or dropping out of school. Girls in the treatment group were marginally more likely to progress a grade than girls in the comparison group

2. When accounting for attrition due to girls not being recontacted (41% of the sample), successful transition rate between baseline and midline is reduced to 63% (69% when excluding girls not followed over time by projects’ external evaluations)

3. Most girls that did not progress in primary school repeated a grade, while at the secondary school level girls that did not progress to the next grade dropped out.

4. Large variation in transition figures is observed across projects. This is due to projects targeting different age groups (i.e., girls in secondary schools who drop out in the transition to higher secondary grades), girls with disabilities (who were more likely to repeat grades), and the armed conflict in Somalia (which resulted in girls losing a grade due to school closures).

GEC-T external evaluators administered household surveys to capture the many pathways girls can take; then tracked these girls for transition outcomes (see Table 6 for a definition of successful and unsuccessful transition). Besides BRAC and CSU, which considers girls who dropped out since baseline to have failed to transition, most external evaluators excluded girls not re-contacted from their reported transition rates. No data exists for these girls at midline as external evaluators could not track them.

Transition outcomes, thus, are examined in this section for girls who were re-contacted between baseline and midline – 59% of the baseline sample. This may paint a more optimistic picture for transition outcomes than the reality as girls not re-contacted (41 per cent of the sample), of which some are likely to have had unsuccessful transitions, are unaccounted for.88 On the other hand, it is worth noting that transition beyond formal cycle of compulsory schools is difficult to categorise. As such, in the next section we present findings derived after consulting project documents and estimating a progression rate which accounts for girl attrition. In addition, we conducted further analysis excluding the sample of girls who were said not to be tracked for transition.

Because the majority of re-contacted girls were sampled in school and are still in school (98% of baseline sample), transition outcomes are limited to schooling outcomes: progression, repetition, and drop-out.

For the out-of-school girls sampled at baseline (2% of baseline sample), the analysis of transition is limited to reenrolment in school or remaining out of school. Table 16 and Table 17 summarise the transition outcomes of inschool girls by treatment and comparison status and key subgroups89, while Table 18 outlines the analogy for out-ofschool girls.

In-school girls

More than 9 out of 10 recontacted girls progressed at least one grade level between baseline and midline (Table 16). Girls in the treatment group were marginally more likely to progress a grade than girls in the comparison group (1.5 percentage points difference). This difference is the lower bound if the ‘unknown transition’ were to be added to this measure. This is also because the difference between the treatment and comparison group for the ‘unknown transition’ is 1.5 percentage points 90 Therefore, it is likely that the difference in successful progression between the treatment and comparison group is in fact larger.

The average repetition rate is 3% for both the treatment and comparison group. In comparison, the average dropout rate is 2% and is slightly lower for treatment girls compared to girls in the comparison group.

When we examine school transition data for girls in the treatment group, we find that the percentage of girls who successfully transition through school decreases with age. Young girls (aged 6 to 8 & underage for grade) are

87 The average time between baseline and midline data collection is 18 months. The minimum difference between the data collection is 12 months, while the maximum is 24 months.

88 Reasons for attrition, which include dropout, are given in Error! Reference source not found.

89 Treatment girls only.

90 Considering ‘unknown’ transition means unsuccessful transition for a subset of girls. Some projects such as BRAC and CSU define girls lost to attrition (unknown transition rate) as unsuccessful transition.