Achieving gender equality in and through education is central to meeting the targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is clear that gender disparity exists in education and largely disadvantages girls. However, there are specific disadvantages that are faced by boys, especially in completing in secondary education in certain geographical locations. For example, in many countries in the Arab States, boys have been consistently dropped out and under-performing in secondary school. In furtherance to our previous work on boys’ underachievement (link to the Commonwealth report), the project tries to examine the nature and root causes of boys’ disadvantage and disengagement from education.
The study reviewed the present situation related to boys’ educational participation, learning achievement and completion. In doing so, it laid particular emphasis on national and sub-national contexts and overlapping disadvantages or intersectionality of features. It also tried to identify structural and gender-related factors that hinder or facilitate boys’ educational participation, learning achievement and completion. This was done on multiple levels: at the level of the individual, family and peers, community, school and broader society. Finally, the study extensively engaged with promising policy and programmatic initiatives to understand the efficacy of various strategies used to address this problem, and the potential implications of scaling these strategies.
