Millions of girls might not go back to school

Coronavirus, like Ebola, may trigger a wave of dropouts

She was 13 when the Ebola virus struck her country, shuttering schools across Sierra Leone. The closures lasted nine months, but Mari Kalokoh could not return to the classroom for years.

“I felt like nobody,” she recalled of her time on the street, begging for food. Now, a radio has replaced her teacher in the era of coronavirus.

The previous epidemic in West Africa forced more girls than boys to halt their studies in the ensuing years, from 2014 to 2016, researchers say, dimming economic prospects for a generation of young women. Educators fear the coronavirus pandemic could trigger another wave of dropouts.

Global shutdowns have pushed approximately 1.5 billion students out of school since March, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, including 111 million girls in the world’s least developed countries.

The disruptions are projected to end or seriously delay the education of 10 million secondary school-age girls, according to an April report from the Malala Fund, which analyzed data from Sierra Leone’s Ebola crisis.

Parents in more traditionally conservative nations tend to prioritize the education of their sons, experts say. In West and Central Africa, 73% of boys older than 15 can read, compared with 60% of girls in the same age group.

So when families lose income, they’re more likely to stretch the budget on schooling for boys, said Laila Gad, UNICEF’s representative in Liberia, a former Ebola hotspot.

Remote learning, she added, is especially burdensome for girls, who are frequently expected to shoulder more cooking, cleaning and babysitting. They’re also more vulnerable to sexual abuse, pregnancy and child marriage during unsupervised downtime.

“Schools are much more than a learning environment,” Gad said. “They provide a protective environment for girls.”

Before the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, 8% of girls did not attend grade school, according to the Malala Fund report. That share nearly tripled in the aftermath.

In Guinea, another hotspot, girls were 25% less likely than boys to re-enroll when life settled back to normal.

And in Sierra Leone, teen pregnancy jumped as much as 65% in some areas. School attendance fell by 16% among 4,800 teenage girls tracked in another study.

Kalokoh, who is now 18, didn’t plan to drop out during the Ebola crisis, but the closures removed a crucial structure from her days.

She passed the afternoons with her boyfriend and got pregnant. Her parents kicked her out of the house.

“They said, ‘You’re a big girl. Go find money for yourself,’” she said.

At the time, Sierra Leone banned expectant mothers from school. Kalokoh survived on scraps from strangers. She lost her baby in childbirth.

“Four years like that — I wasn’t doing anything,” she said. “Just walking up and down, up and down the street.”

Grief clouded everything. Then she found a charity that helped her enroll again. This lockdown, she’s learning English with the help of radio classes. Kalokoh aims to graduate in four years and eventually study law.

“I want to help other girls,” she said.

Eric Tahé, a grade school teacher in northern Ivory Coast, shares that mission.

When his classroom reopened last month, one of his students, a 14-year-old girl, returned pregnant. He visited her parents at home, urging them: Keep her in school.