Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.In 2012, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) launched the £355 million Girls' Education Challenge Fund (GEC) to support up to a million of the world's most marginalised girls to improve their lives through education. GEC projects are providing girls with access to education, materials, safe spaces to learn and a 'voice'. They help to mobilise and build capacity within governments, communities and schools through training and mentoring teachers, governors and community leaders. Baseline data As part of the evaluation of GEC, a substantial amount of primary data was collected at baseline. The GEC baseline research aimed to capture the scale and nature of educational marginalisation in project areas before the start of GEC programme activities. It measured current education outcomes of girls (and boys) with respect to attendance, enrolment, retention and learning outcomes. It also explored the prevalence and importance of potential barriers to girls' education, ranging from poverty and household economics through early marriage and pregnancy, cultural attitudes, and violence. Data were collected from households and schools in GEC intervention and control areas to enable a counterfactual evaluation design. It is planned that the Household Survey will be conducted three times in total, with the aim of tracking a cohort of girls in the respondent households over the course of the GEC's programme lifecycle. Midline data The midline evaluation covers the first two years of the projects' three-year implementation period in the first phase of the GEC. The purpose of the midline evaluation was to provide evidence of the programme's impact on being-in-school and learning outcomes, effectiveness and sustainability. As part of the evaluation of the GEC, a substantial amount of primary data was collected at midline. This included roughly 6,000 household surveys in fourteen GEC project...