What matters for girls' education? Reflecting on 12 years of the Girls' Education Challenge

It was 2011 and I was standing on a cold, bleak November morning in a big shed just outside Heathrow airport, waiting to pitch for some work for a pest-control company. I’d recently become a Partner in PwC and I thought I was doing great, but my market – Government policy, grants, education and research – had nosedived overnight. I was left with no chargeable work and was exploring all avenues. I pitched to the pest control people, and we lost!

Next day, I was in the PwC office licking my wounds and a fellow PwC Partner, Paul George, gave me a chunky document. It was an Invitation to Tender from the UK Government for a programme called the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC). “Have a look and let me know what you think” he said. We bid, we did a 3-hour pitch, and this time we were lucky enough to be successful. And I’m very proud to say that PwC has been involved as the Fund Manager of the GEC ever since.

The GEC remains the largest global fund dedicated specifically to girls’ education and has reached 1.6 million marginalised girls. It was a pleasure and privilege to be involved in the programme, but it wasn’t always easy. We had many challenges and, indeed, some dark days. But I’m very proud of what the programme has achieved and our team’s contribution to it.

Part of the GEC legacy is the huge amount of learning from the programme about ‘what works’ in girls’ education. As I reflect on this with the benefit of hindsight, there are three things I remember well in terms of what mattered and made a difference.

1. Evidence matters for girls’ education

We were running a workshop back in 2012 to ask grant recipients in the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) to gather quantitative impact data on education outcomes and undertake beneficiary surveys. It was all pretty tense! I remember well the moment we told them we wouldn’t release the grant funding unless they did. A deathly hush swept over the room. What we were asking them to do felt counter-cultural. Many of them had previously received grants based on qualitative data including case studies, testimonials and grant recipient stories. But now it was all about the numbers. Why?

The UK Government were unwavering in their commitment to collecting hard data, particularly on education and learning outcomes including literacy and numeracy. We persisted. Although we lost some grant recipients along the way, most of them came on the ‘evidence journey’ with us, and many described it as something that helped them build new much-needed capacity and transform their organisations.

I believe evidence matters for girls’ education in three ways:

• Programme design: Sally Gear was a senior official at DFID, responsible for gender and education. Her team were the original architects of GEC and pushed the business case through the highest levels of the Government, in large part based on assembling robust empirical evidence about the impact of girls’ education on earnings, health, the economy and a range of other factors. Evidence was always at the heart of the original design of the GEC programme.
  
  
• Programme delivery: I remember once having the unenviable task of having to close a GEC project because it wasn’t performing. However, at the end of a difficult discussion with the grant recipient, they thanked our team for the clarity of the rationale, based on the evidence. We couldn’t have done this without hard, quantitative evidence which took the tension, subjectivity and politics out of the process. Grant recipients are diverse: some need to be left alone and encouraged from time to time; some need a helping hand or specific types of support; and some, I’m afraid, need crisis intervention including closure. Without robust data and evidence, it’s impossible to figure out where everyone is at and who needs what. Evidence, data and research are critical for effective ongoing programme delivery and grant management.
  
  
• Programme sustainability: In March 2024, I attended the big GEC celebration event at FCDO. On arrival, I was handed a GEC Results Pamphlet, full of quantitative data about the programme’s impact. When I walked into the reception hall, I bumped into old friends, Professor Pauline Rose from the 'REAL' centre at Cambridge University, Simon Griffiths from Tetra Tech and Paul Atherton of Fab Inc. Together they led a team of highly skilled and hard-nosed independent evaluators - you can see their reports here. The key point is that GEC started off as a 4-year programme and has ended up going for over 12 years. Robust evidence and research have underpinned this longevity. It’s one of the key reasons why GEC has stood the test of time and survived political vagaries, economic cycles and funding uncertainties.

2. Peace matters for girls’ education

One day, I had to break some tragic news to a room full of senior colleagues. I cried. A couple of projects were operating in a beautiful country but war-torn country. A group of folk associated with one grant recipient had been travelling to work alongside the front-line project workers. They were following all the security protocols, but their convoy got hijacked and one of them was shot dead. It was devastating. The organisation they worked for was brilliant, and responded with professionalism, sensitivity and integrity. We, and others in the grant funding ecosystem, did what we could to support them. Everyone felt the pain and loss. And then - wait for it - the organisation doubled down on delivering its girls’ education programmes. It was humbling for many of us who were steps away from the front line. The tragedy created an even stronger rationale for them to deliver for local girls.

The GEC operated in many countries that were riddled with war and conflict. And in such contexts the sad reality is that girls' education generally suffers more than boys. A recent study has shown that a girl of primary school age living in a crisis-affected country is 35% more likely to be out of school than her male contemporaries.^[1]

So that’s the problem. But what about the solution? How can education possibly be delivered effectively during crisis and conflict? The evidence shows clearly that educators, aid workers and other stakeholders need to think and act differently, be razor focused on the children, and stay nimble on their feet. The GEC Learning Brief “Effective education for girls in emergencies and protracted crises” found that educators need to focus on three key things:

• Supplement mainstream services with informal, community-based initiatives. Disruption means that formal education systems on their own can’t be relied on to deliver for pupils, and girls in particular. In fragile parts of Afghanistan, DR Congo and Somalia informal, community-based initiatives played a very positive role working alongside and within formal systems, through catch-up learning, remedial services for pupils with particular difficulties, and teacher training top ups. This requires educators and aid workers to collaborate better and do whatever it takes to maintain front line services.
  
  
• Engage parents and communities about educating girls. Traditional stereotypes about which children deserve to be in the classroom are always present and typically stubborn to shift. Even in crisis situations, there are often significant groups who don’t naturally support or prioritise girls’ education. GEC evidence has shown that sensitive and targeted work with parents, community leaders and religious leaders can change perceptions and lay more solid foundations for girls’ education. This becomes even more important in a crisis.
  
  
• Build girls’ resilience, safety and mental health. Conflict often exacerbates girls’ physical, mental and social vulnerability. This means that in conflict situations, educators and aid workers need to double down on measures that build resilience, safety and mental health – for girls, their families and their communities.

As a child of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, I’ve seen firsthand the disruptive effect that conflict has on education.^[2] The global evidence is consistent with this. And that evidence shows that we need a laser focus on girls’ education, particularly because of ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere.

3. Business matters for girls’ education

Before PwC bid for the GEC Fund Management role, I was involved in some pretty serious discussions with my senior colleagues. It was a hard sell! The focus of GEC was on marginalised girls in lower income countries. We’d be working through local and international charities, delivering in challenging environments including war zones and conflict states. PwC would be taking on fiduciary responsibility for millions of UK taxpayers’ money. And all of this with a commercial return for us that was modest compared to what we could get elsewhere in the market…

But, for me, the flip side was compelling. Firstly, PwC’s ‘Purpose’ was ‘to build trust in society and solve important problems’ and the GEC’s aims were fully aligned to this. Secondly, PwC was a global firm with offices, affiliates and client relationships in most of the countries in which the GEC was operating. This gave us a great new opportunity to bring our infrastructure to bear in relation to a big global issue on behalf of the UK government. Thirdly, PwC’s sweet spot was looking after the money and driving value from funding. With millions of UK taxpayers’ money at stake, surely it was better for us to be stewarding it, rather than someone else who might not have the skills or the inclination to do the best job possible.

Involving businesses like us in this sort of work was a significant departure, both philosophically and operationally, for the UK Government. At times along the way, my colleagues and I got some ‘heat’ from the more established players in the international development ecosystem. However, I’m convinced that we, and the private sector more generally, made a clear contribution to the GEC over the years. Here are a few things I’d suggest we brought to the party:

• Resources: The GEC didn’t rely solely on Government funding. There was a “matched funding” element built into the programme, through which projects had to raise additional capital from the private sector or other sources to complement the main grant funding. For the period 2017-24, GEC projects attracted £66m in matched funding, representing about 15% of the UK Government funding over the same period - a pretty solid resource contribution!
  
  
• Technology: The private sector was in the process of rolling out digital technology to enhance the reach and quality of education. The GEC supported some brilliant technology-driven projects that had a big impact on education outcomes for marginalised. These projects only happen when businesses work effectively with civil society and state education providers. No business = no technology = less education!
  
  
• Skills: Although it has its limitations, the private sector has deep skills and knowledge in areas that you just don’t get elsewhere. For example, the accountants in our GEC finance team were excellent - fastidiously tracking every penny of UK taxpayers’ money (to the point, at times, of making themselves a wee bit unpopular with the rest of the team!). Likewise, our risk and fraud people were lethal, and liked nothing better than getting to the bottom of people’s misdemeanours, bringing them to account and protecting or rescuing as much of the public funding as possible.

The private sector isn’t perfect. It doesn’t have all the answers. It can’t tackle the big global issues on its own. But it has a role to play in international development, and global education in particular. My experience on the GEC suggests strongly that it has a legitimate seat at the table. And if we don’t engage the private sector effectively, we’re missing a big opportunity. This is about creating new, innovative and constructive partnerships between business, technology providers, Government and civil society. Establishing these can up the ante and amplify the work of established education providers on the ground. Let’s go for it. We can’t afford not to!

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^[1] Mind the Gap Report and Policy Paper Series, Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies see here. And this is consistent with a evidence presented recently by the World Bank - Girls' education in conflict is most at risk: here's how to reach them

^[2] I’ve written separately about the Northern Ireland experience, for example in my recent blog published by the Global Partnership for Education. One of the arguments here is that the education-peace equation goes in both directions; yes, as outlined above, the absence of peace disrupts education. But education can also lay the foundations for peaceful and prosperous societies. And it's also worth noting that in Northern Ireland, the positive role of women, particularly through the Women's Coalition, has been pretty well documented; see, for example, "Women's Work: the Story of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition", Fearon, K., Blacksaff Press.