DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-7736-2
title: Girls' Education Challenge Data, 2013-2016: Special Licence Access
title: GEC SCW

description: In 2012, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) launched the £355 million Girls' Education Challenge Fund (GEC) to support up to a million of the world's most marginalised girls to improve their lives through education. GEC projects are providing girls with access to education, materials, safe spaces to learn and a 'voice'. They help to mobilise and build capacity within governments, communities and schools through training and mentoring teachers, governors and community leaders.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;

&lt;i&gt;Baseline data&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
As part of the evaluation of GEC, a substantial amount of primary data was collected at baseline. The GEC baseline research aimed to capture the scale and nature of educational marginalisation in project areas before the start of GEC programme activities. It measured current education outcomes of girls (and boys) with respect to attendance, enrolment, retention and learning outcomes. It also explored the prevalence and importance of potential barriers to girls' education, ranging from poverty and household economics through early marriage and pregnancy, cultural attitudes, and violence. Data were collected from households and schools in GEC intervention and control areas to enable a counterfactual evaluation design. It is planned that the Household Survey will be conducted three times in total, with the aim of tracking a cohort of girls in the respondent households over the course of the GEC's programme lifecycle. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;

&lt;i&gt;Midline data&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The midline evaluation covers the first two years of the projects' three-year implementation period in the first phase of the GEC. The purpose of the midline evaluation was to provide evidence of the programme's impact on being-in-school and learning outcomes, effectiveness and sustainability. As part of the evaluation of the GEC, a substantial amount of primary data was collected at midline. This included roughly 6,000 household surveys in fourteen GEC project areas across nine countries, and associated learning assessments for randomly selected girls within each respondent household (these girls were followed-up from the baseline sample). In addition, around 6,200 learning assessments were conducted in schools in five project locations across three countries which included boys and girls selected from primary school grades 2 and 4. The GEC midline research aimed to capture the scale and nature of educational marginalisation in project areas before the start of GEC programme activities. Similar to the baseline survey, it measured current education outcomes of girls (and boys) with respect to attendance, enrolment, retention and learning outcomes (literacy and numeracy). It also explored the prevalence and importance of potential barriers to girls' education, ranging from poverty and household economics through early marriage and pregnancy, cultural attitudes, and violence. Data was collected from households and schools in GEC intervention and control areas to enable a counterfactual evaluation design. This was the second of the planned three household survey waves.
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Further information about the project can be found on the gov.uk &lt;a href="https://www.gov.uk/girls-education-challenge" title="Girls' Education Challenge"&gt;Girls' Education Challenge&lt;/a&gt; webpage.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;

For the second edition (July 2017) data and documentation from the midline evaluation phase of the project were added to the study, which previously contained materials from the baseline phase only.
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