International Women’s Day is the perfect time to reflect on all that we’ve achieved over the last few decades in our efforts for gender equity in education.  Much of the work focused on access to education has brought powerful results in gender parity, achieving an equal percentage of girls and boys in the average classroom across many developing countries, thanks to a concerted effort by governments, development agencies and funders.

What is becoming very clear, however, is that just getting girls into school is the start of the battle for equity – not the end.  The education crisis across our world is deepening, with dropout rates skyrocketing in public schools across the developing world where more children than ever have seats.  Quality is low, teachers are often absent, and the public system lacks sustainable funding sources due to economic underdevelopment of countries.

It’s easy to think that we’ve made meaningful, lasting positive change in the developing world, and that we’re close to meeting our ultimate objective to get every child into good quality schools immediately.  The reality, however, is that the problem continues to grow.

The United Nations Education for All initiative saw an average of USD $11.5 billion per year invested in African education by foreign governments from 2000-15, adding approximately 100 million new seats to the continent’s supply, but with two fatal flaws: little growth in domestic government spending, and even less attention paid to teachers.

The result of this might be seen quite starkly in Uganda, where just about every child in the country will join a classroom for day one of primary school, but 52 per cent of 15 to 24-year-olds still haven’t completed their primary education.  Teachers often don’t show up for lessons, schools are poorly monitored, and there isn’t enough money in the system to pay proper wages to teachers or fund supplies, resulting in public education that isn’t free, and whose quality is abysmal.

Getting girls into school is a start, yes—but to what end if they’re not learning, and dropping out early?  In many ways, Education for All is a castle on a cloud.  While we cannot ignore many key advancements of education systems, the permanent under-resourcing of education in developing countries has uncovered a crack in the armour of our aim for universal public education.

In Australia, much like many other developed nations, this dream is a reality built upon high per-capita GDP, a strong tax base and efficient government—three things that differentiate Australia from almost every developing country government.  And contrary to popular belief, African governments already allocate a larger percentage of public spending to education, on average, than any other continent in the world.  The problem?  The pie from which they cut that giant slice is just, well, a very small pie.

We can continue to dump foreign aid dollars on the faulty assumption that developing governments will be able to ‘catch up’ and sustain such an expensive educational infrastructure, or we can pivot to a solution that has a legitimate chance of success.  This is precisely what we’ve done at Opportunity International.

Over the last six years, Opportunity International has helped more than 2.2 million children (1 million girls) in Sub-Saharan Africa go to good schools, and to improve both the quality and equity of those schools. To do so, we’ve introduced a two-pronged approach: lending and teacher engagement.

Nathan Byrd, Head of Global Programs, Opportunity International

First give leaders of affordable community schools—which are often launched and run by a passionate group of parents or social entrepreneur in the community—small loans to improve their schools.  And because parents in insecure employment often struggle to ensure that their children get into school on time and stay there all year, we offer parents small loans as well, so that they can pay fees for their local public or community school.  Where parents might have had to choose which child to send to school on time, with access to finance, the need for such a terrible choice disappears.

The leaders of community schools use their loans to build classrooms, purchase materials, upgrade facilities and better train staff.  In a critical initiative to increase the longevity of girls in their schools, they build gender-separated toilets to ensure that teenage girls don’t miss school when they have their period, girls’ dormitories to limit the risk of being held home as household tasks spike, and protective fences to reassure parents their girls are safe during the day.

These community schools often result from parents themselves saying, ‘Enough is enough, we want our kids to go to quality schools, we want our kids to have opportunities’, so they band together and form parents’ associations, pull together a little bit of capital and start the school as a business. They’re passion-driven people, not profiteers, and there’re saying, ‘We’ve found a solution and we want help in achieving it.’ Microfinance is that help.

By supporting these locally-owned and operated schools, we grow the base of quality education available to low-income families, and take financial pressure off the failing public education system, making it more likely to succeed.

Community schools in Sub-Saharan Africa are giving girls opportunities to thrive at school, as teachers are incentivised to provide a high-quality education, and operators have a vested interest in ensuring they stay through the end of their education years.

To ensure that schools are best prepared to be successful, Opportunity has launched the Pathways to Excellence program, an education quality framework that engages teachers across 30 categories of quality improvement in schools over several years, bringing teachers and administrators from multiple local schools together to form a family group focused on continual improvement.  This gives teachers voice, owners the opportunity to improve, and students the best chance to receive a high-quality education from highly-engaged educators.

Through microfinance, Opportunity is helping to change the face of girl’s education in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Three years ago, we brought the model to India.  Since then, we have worked with nearly a quarter of a million children through schools and family microfinance interventions, targeting the same improvement of education in India that we’ve begun to achieve in Africa.

Step by step, country by country, we’re using microfinance as a tool with local communities, helping them to achieve real, sustainable education solutions for their children and for future generations.  By specifically targeting improvements that bring about gender parity in both access and quality of education, we ensure the pursuit of real education for all—a step closer to our dream of democratising access to and quality of education for everyone, everywhere.

In the lead up to International Women's Day click here to help girls in India go to quality schools so they grow into empowered women who live lives free from poverty.