Barriers to Girls’ Secondary School Participation: Retention and Completion in Jinja District- Eastern Uganda

The importance of female education is well acknowledged in development studies and practice. While attainment of basic education formed the initial concerns culminating into many developing country governments’ putting in place programs of compulsory and free primary schooling, policy focus has now shifted to; the completion of primary schooling, transition into secondary schooling, retention in these secondary schools and it’s subsequent completion for girls to be able to make meaningful economic contributions in their societies. This study uses Jinja district in Uganda as a case study to deduce the factors that all together work towards the barring of girls from participating in secondary schooling. The methodology of the study uses Universal Secondary Education (USE) Programme as a base to select schools which have been targeted with this free schooling, to show other factors other than lack of tuition fees that affect girls’ retention and completion of secondary schooling and how these factors interact while affecting girls schooling. Methods used to collect data are one-to-one interviews with teachers, education officials, girls and boys in and out of school and reviewed secondary data sources. The study uses the intersectionality theory borrowed from feminist literature to analyse the intersections of factors which affects girls schooling. Results of the study show an interlocking of factors of gender, rural residence and economic class as all together disempowering to girls education in secondary schooling. While the study is based on an analysis that looks at the intricate difference of girls as a social category, it does not aim to show which type of girls are more disadvantaged, but how an interlocking of these barriers happens, so as to give a better sense of information that can be used to formulate polices aimed at ensuring more girls have secondary schooling. Relevance to Development Studies The multifarious benefits of female education attainment are well understood in development work such as; improvement in women’s own health outcomes and life expectancy, lowering of child and infant mortality and reduced fertility rates. In many sub-Saharan African countries, the gender gap in schooling is wide, and gets even wider the higher the school level. For girls to be able to access enough education that can make an impact that enables the break away from the cycle of poverty there is increasing need to focus not only on enrolment, but also on retention and the completion of secondary schooling.