Girls’ Education at Scale - Evidence on Large-Scale Programs and Policies

Jul 19, 2026

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The article reviews which educational programs and policies improve outcomes for girls at scale, focusing on interventions reaching at least 10,000 students and on final school results such as completion and learning. It identifies approaches with strong evidence across multiple countries—fee elimination, school meals, improved physical accessibility, and better pedagogy quality—while noting that other options show promise but lack broad, consistent evidence. It also discusses constraints, potential solutions, and program costs, highlighting lessons for scaling evidence-based reforms effectively.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages59

Reading Time2 h 29 min

Girls’ education at scale

What the review focuses on

Interventions with evidence at scale

Barriers and why gaps persist

Evidence and considerations for policy scaling

Pub lic Disclosure Authorized Pub lic Disclosure Authorized Girls’ Education at Scale David K. Evans, Amina Mendez Acosta, and Fei Yuan Many educational interventions boost outcomes for girls in settings where girls face educa tional disadvantages, but which of those interventions are proven to function effectively at large scale? In contrast to earlier reviews, this review focuses on large-scale programs and policies—those that reach at least 10,000 students—and on final school outcomes such as completion and student learning rather than intermediate school outcomes such as enroll ment and attendance. Programs and policies that have boosted school completion or learning at scale across multiple countries include school fee elimination, school meals, making schools more physically accessible, and improving the quality of pedagogy. Other interventions, such as providing better sanitation facilities or safe spaces for girls, show promising results but either have limited evidence across settings or focus on intermediate educational outcomes (such as enrollment) or post-educational outcomes (such as income earning) in their evaluations. These and other areas with limited or no evidence demonstrate many opportunities for education leaders, partners, and researchers to continue innovating and test ing programs at scale. We discuss three considerations for incorporating evidence-based solutions into local education policies—constraints to girls’ education, potential solutions, and program costs—as well as lessons for scaling programs effectively. JEL Codes: I21, I24, J16, O15 Keywords: education, gender, girls’ education, inequality. Gender equality is a stated objective in much of the world: indeed, the fifth Sustainable Development Goal is “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”(United Nations 2015) . Education is a crucial human capital investment that opens the door to subsequent economic opportunity. As a result, gender equality in education is one crucial step—albeit not the only one—towards achieving gender equality in life outcomes more broadly. Girls’ education is often touted as one of the best investments in international development (Kim 2016), and estimates of the returns to education for girls are consistently higher than those for boys (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 2018) . But across The World Bank Research Observer © The Author(s) 2023 . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, [please contact journals.permissions@oup.com](please contact journals.permissions@oup.com) [https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lkad002](https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lkad002) 39:47–74 Downloaded from [https://academic.oup.com/wbro/article/39/1/47/7118950 by World Bank and IMF user on 02 February 2024](https://academic.oup.com/wbro/article/39/1/47/7118950 by World Bank and IMF user on 02 February 2024) many low-and middle-income countries, adult women on average still have less education than men. Young women in their early 20s in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa still complete fewer years of education than young men of the same age, whereas in other regions, women have gained more ground (Evans et al. 2021). These average shifts mask important differences across countries, within regions of countries, and across levels of schooling. Why, despite higher estimated returns, do girls still achieve less education than boys in some parts of the world? Psaki et al. (2022) hypothesize 18 barriers to girls’education. Some of those barriers affect girls disproportionate

FAQs

这项综述聚焦于哪类教育干预？

综述聚焦于能够覆盖至少10,000名学生的“大规模项目与政策”，并以学生完成学业与学习结果等最终产出为重点。

哪些干预在多国范围内被证明能提升女孩在规模化条件下的教育结果？

在多国范围内提升完成度或学习的干预包括：取消学校费用、提供学校餐、改善学校物理可达性，以及提升教学法质量。

为什么在一些地区即使收益预估更高，女孩仍可能比男孩接受更少教育？

文章指出，家庭和教师的性别偏见会强化女孩面临的障碍；同时存在与女孩更相关或对女孩更敏感的因素，例如学校卫生条件不足或学校中的性别暴力，以及费用相关的敏感性和教师歧视性态度等。

Jul 19, 2026

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