Ebola in Sierra Leone
To effectively mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on girls' education in Bangladesh, governing bodies and organizations should consider case studies from countries that experienced similar crises like Sierra Leone
Lessons From the Past: Ebola in Sierra Leone
In early 2014 an outbreak of the Ebola virus in parts of West Africa led Sierra Leone to initiate a nationwide shutdown of schools for 39 weeks, putting over 1.8 million students out of school for more than nine months (Grace Taulo, 2020). Girls in Sierra Leone already received less than half of the average years of education that boys did before the epidemic, resulting in a proportionally larger loss of learning during the shutdown. While schools were closed, UNICEF found that violence against children, teen pregnancies, and early marriages all increased. Even when schools reopened, many girls did not return to school due to various economic, societal, and legal pressures (Grace Taulo, 2020).Investigating these pressures, the Malala Fund found that:
- Families suffered economically and could not pay for their daughters to return to school
- The number of girls aged 12-17 working to generate income increased by 19%
- Families kept their daughters home because they were unaware of the safety measures being taken to safely reopen schools
- The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology upheld its ban on visibly pregnant girls enrolling in school, giving school principals the power to decide who to admit and preventing many adolescent girls from re-enrolling
- This ban was reversed only recently in March 2020
Overall, the Malala Fund found that girls’ enrollment rates following the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone dropped 16% (Malala Fund, 2020)
Key Takeaways:
Attempts to mitigate the impact of Ebola-related school closures on girls in Sierra Leone led the Malala Fund and UNICEF to develop several key takeaways that should be considered when advocating for the protection of girls’ education during and after COVID-19:- Targeted communication and policies help ensure girls can continue to learn during and after school closure
- To combat a lack of access to the internet or an electronic device, radios were distributed to reach marginalized communities in Sierra Leone. These radios played educational programming and were used to communicate school safety measures as schools reopened (Grace Taulo, 2020).
- UNICEF developed a “bridging program” targeted at pregnant girls that allowed them to come to school and continue learning after regular hours despite the Ministry of Education’s ban (Grace Taulo, 2020).
- Specific incentives help facilitate the return of marginalized girls to school
- The government of Sierra Leone waived school and examination fees, provided learning materials, and scaled-up school feeding programs to motivate families struggling economically to send their girls to school. Cash transfers and community education programs have also been shown to be effective at encouraging girls’ enrollment (Malala Fund, 2020).