Abstract
Background: Adolescent girls dropping out of school may lead to gender inequality, high illiteracy levels, single motherhood, unemployment, and many more undesirable outcomes that inhabit human capital development for girls. It is therefore important to put measures in place to support adolescent girls to stay in school. The objectives of the scoping review were to identify and describe the types of studies conducted to assess interventions for keeping adolescent girls in school and to describe these interventions in low- and middle-income countries.Methods and Results: A comprehensive search was done in Epistemonikos, Social Science Citation index, Embase, OVID Medline, the Campbell Collaboration Library, and CENTRAL in March 2020. The search yielded 3,295 studies of which 18 studies were eligible for inclusion. All the 18 included studies were primary studies, and 12 out of these were randomized controlled studies. The other study designs of included studies were mixed-methods longitudinal design, random evaluation, cross section, etc. The interventions in the included studies were categorized as follows: provision of funding, school-based interventions for learners, community-based interventions, and education systems intervention. Provision of school fees, and other school supplies have shown evidence of reducing school dropouts, increasing enrolments and school attendance, while interventions like hygiene promotion and water treatment in a study done in Kenya found no significant evidence to support the observed effect on school attendance.Conclusion: The scoping review found that several primary studies have been done on interventions to keep adolescent girls in school. However, there is need for more research to be done. Therefore, the authors propose to conduct a systematic review on the effect of provision of sanitary towels to adolescent girls on school retention in low- and middle-income countries.
Highlights
According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), about 263 million children and youth were out of school in 2016
As the scoping review aimed to identify and describe the types of studies that had been conducted to assess interventions for keeping adolescent girls in school, it included all primary studies and systematic reviews done on interventions to keeping adolescent girls in school in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as defined by the WHO (World Health Organization, 2019)
School dropout is often linked with poverty; poverty affects the ability of households to pay school fees and other costs associated with education
Summary
According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), about 263 million children and youth were out of school in 2016. Adolescent girls dropping out of school may have consequences such as high illiteracy levels, single motherhood, unemployment, little or no access to medical or health services, increased teenage pregnancies, and increased child mortality. Child marriage, and early pregnancy are interrelated outcomes that have an enormous impact on adolescent girls (Sampa et al, 2018). Little or no schooling is associated with extreme poverty and hunger, gender inequality, increased child mortality, increased teenage pregnancy rates, and early sexual debut. Adolescent girls dropping out of school may lead to gender inequality, high illiteracy levels, single motherhood, unemployment, and many more undesirable outcomes that inhabit human capital development for girls. The objectives of the scoping review were to identify and describe the types of studies conducted to assess interventions for keeping adolescent girls in school and to describe these interventions in low- and middleincome countries
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