Teach and Educate Adolescent Girls with Community Help (TEACH)

The TEACH project supported 30,257 girls and was implemented by the International Rescue Committee in Pakistan.

Globally, Pakistan has the second-highest number of out-of-school children, with approximately 22.8 million between the ages of five and 16 years not attending school. Baluchistan has the highest number of out-of-school children (47%) and the lowest literacy rate (46%) amongst all provinces. Poverty is the main barrier to education, and rates are poverty are higher in rural areas (85%) in comparison to urban areas (38%). Project communities are generally remote and hard to reach thus access to schools is an issue. In addition, these communities tend to have conservative attitudes towards gender norms, and place little value on girls’ education.

TEACH increased the most marginalised girls’ access to education and improved their learning, transition outcomes and life standards through supporting their engagement in more formal education, technical education and employment. It developed safe learning centres for underprivileged, out-of-school girls, girls that were married or pregnant, and girls with disabilities. Dependent on age, the girls enrolled in one of two pathways: younger girls were supported via an Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP) after which they transitioned to formal or non-formal education. There was a more employment skills-based approach for the older girls. The project also addressed harmful social norms and the barriers faced by girls in accessing education at the family, community, school and system levels.

Main activities

• Establishing an Accelerated Learning Programme and basic literacy and numeracy learning for 10 to 14-year-old girls and supporting transition to further education.
• Supporting 15 to 19-year-old girls to transition to formal/non-formal education, access market-relevant technical and vocational training, and providing employment and entrepreneurship advice to through the IRC-developed Learn to Earn curricula.
• Delivering teacher trainings on areas such as lesson planning, pedagogy, child safeguarding and inclusiveness.
• Providing life-skills and Social-Emotional Learning to all girls across the project through the Girls Shine component to address harmful social norms and gendered-barriers.
• Organising social mobilisation and enrolment campaigns in target communities as well as via radio broadcast and mobile text messaging to bring about positive change towards girls’ education.

The project in numbers

Lessons learned

When supply-side barriers are addressed, the demand for girls’ education rises significantly. Key supply-side factors include provision of free, quality education, in schools in proximity to the beneficiaries’ homes, safe spaces conducive to learning, support for the costs of education, the provision of trained, qualified female teachers and adequate learning materials.

Social emotional learning (SEL) skills have a direct link with learning performance. There was significant improvement in the social and emotional skills of the girls from the baseline to endline, and these skills had a direct link with improved learning performance. TEACH used well-structured, easy to understand and context appropriate Girl Shine curriculum in addition to the ALP curriculum

The longstanding presence and established linkages of partners at field level was a key factor in supporting community mobilisation and their ownership of project interventions. In addition, the close coordination with relevant government departments and representatives positively impacted in establishing, executing, and managing the project’s interventions.

Continuously generating evidence helps ensure effective project implementation. Evidence generation is essential to inform programme design and enable decision makers to understand issues and barriers in educating girls in hard-to-reach areas. TEACH invested substantially in conducting research studies developing White Papers to inform relevant audiences, including local journalists, who could in their own capacity continue advocacy for girls’ education, even after the project was completed.

International Rescue Committee (IRC): https://www.rescue.org/