Have a read...this is why we're doing what we're doing this week...

In Africa, girls attend school for an average of only 2.82 years before they reach the age of 16.¹ That’s the least amount of time than anywhere else in the world.  Isn’t that figure alarming? We already know the benefits of girls’ education (reduction of poverty, improvement of  maternal health, greater economic growth, etc). So why is this figure so low? If we tried to identify one single reason, we would struggle. However, what we can tell you is that one reason of many is the barrier of costs associated with sending a girl to school.

In one of our previous posts, we explained that $240 will give a girl in Sierra Leone access to education. This amount covers the direct costs, like school fees and teacher’s salaries, as well as indirect costs like school books and uniforms. But in truth, there are a lot more costs for a family when sending their girl to school. These extra costs are the hidden costs or in development speak, the OPPORTUNITY COSTS.

Let’s explain that further.

In Sierra Leone, roughly 75% of the population live below the poverty line. Families in Sierra Leone neither have the resources nor the time to manage and cope with all the tasks of their daily lives. As a result, chores such as collecting water, cooking, cleaning and looking after the younger or sick siblings are allocated to the girls in the family.

Approximately 40 % of parents of out of school girls aged 10-18 cited the need for their work.²

When parents send their girls to school, there is a cost to the family with the loss of her work and services. There also may be a loss of family income when girls go to school instead of working at the market selling goods or beverages. These costs (and losses) are all OPPORTUNITY COSTS.

Girls are expected to work more than boys because parents believe there is a higher return from sending boys to school and the benefits from a girl’s education are harder and more distant to reach. It’s a cost versus benefit seesaw and in their eyes, unfortunately the opportunity costs (and other costs) outweigh the benefits.

Let’s take another example of an opportunity cost. Girls are more likely to be sexually harassed or subject to violence on their way to school, if it is far from or not in their village. It may not be safe for the girls to walk to school alone and as a result parents may need to pay for transportation or even more costly, walk them to school themselves. There is a loss of time in labour for both the child and parent which means ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY COST.

So how can we overcome this giant hurdle of opportunity costs?

We’d like to say it is easy and that we can address all these costs with a click of a finger, however the underlying causes of these costs are complex and come from years and years of inequality between men and women. BUT it’s not all doom and gloom.