The World Bank has determined that girls’ education has a significant effect on reducing malnutrition and increasing child immunization, and is linked to lower infant mortality rates and reduced poverty for the community at large.  And, according to the Academy for Educational Development, females who have received a high school education are more likely to promote higher levels of education and medical care in their households, and their husbands are more likely to be engaged in life-long learning as a result of ongoing conversation with their partners.

"While education at the primary level is important, it is at the secondary level that individuals find not only knowledge, but the empowerment to use that knowledge to alter their behavior at the individual, familial, community and national level. A child at the primary level, for instance, may learn that to prevent malaria one should sleep under a mosquito net; however, it is only at the secondary level that the child will begin to understand the causal and scientific reasoning for this as well as the long-term economic benefits. Further, it is at the secondary level that the child will begin to feel empowered and worthy of putting these sorts of decisions into practice and to encourage others to do so." Id.

World Bank research also shows that there are significant private returns (as opposed to social returns) on investment in girls education as well.  An increase in the share of women with secondary education of just one percentage point is correlated with a boost in annual per capita income growth by 0.3 percent on average.

Unfortunately, programs designed to promote female high school education often fail in the most rural and traditional of villages, in part because of internal programmatic failings (corruption, inefficiency), and in part because financial aid is only part of the picture.  Girls from poor remote villages face a special set of challenges in attending high school, as do their families.  Parents who are enthusiastic about their daughter's education may nevertheless be unprepared for the loss of her help within household, and require her to forego homework in order to keep up with her chores.  The student, although confident and competitive in her own environment, may be deeply discouraged by her relative academic inferiority in her new classroom, embarrassed by her dialect, and unable to make eye contact with her classmates or teachers.  The result is a set of overwhelming pressures from school and from home, that are linked with disproportionately high drop-out rates among minority females throughout the developing world.

Learn now the RLSP succeeds where other programs fail.