UNESCO Launches 'Lifting Barriers: Educated Boys for Gender Equality' project in Cambodia to promote gender-transformative education

Promoting gender equality in education is vital for meeting the 2030 Agenda for SDG 4 to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" and SDG 5 to "achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls". While the global community has made significant strides in promoting girls' education, there is growing concern about boys increasingly disengaging from school. Today, there are 6 million more boys than girls out of school globally. In many areas, boys are more likely to repeat grades and often have lower academic performance in key subjects like reading and writing. In 57 countries, including Cambodia, boys score lower in reading than girls.

In Cambodia, progress has been made in expanding access to education, leading to an enrolment rate of 91.6% at the primary level in the 2022/23 school year. Over the past five years, more girls have been enrolling in school compared to boys, highlighting the achievements made in girls' empowerment while raising concerns over the issues of boys' disengagement from education. In the latest school year, boys have a lower enrollment rate and completion rate compared to girls across all levels of education, with the gap increasing as they enter into higher grades. Dropout remains a significant challenge, affecting boys more severely. On average, 17% of boys dropped out at the lower secondary school level, compared to 13.8% of girls.

Despite the evidence, there remains a dearth of research aimed at comprehensively understanding effective strategies to tackle boys' disengagement from education. This project examines which interventions focusing on masculine gender norms can make a difference in education. The results will support the development of a global intervention, adapted for local contexts based on locally identified disadvantages for boys at school and their relationship with detrimental gender norms.