The Gambian Education system has, since the inception of the 1988 -2003 Education Policy, put adequate emphasises on the education of the girl child within the framework of government's commitment to increase access to education. This emphasis, which was renewed in the Revised Education Policy 1988 -2003 with its accompanying Master Plan, has culminated in the introduction of a Girls' Education Programme as part of government's response to the Beijing Declaration.

Since the 1995 Beijing Conference, there has been a remarkable increase in the participation rates of girls at all levels of the Gambian education system. At the primary level, while the number of girls attending school as a proportion of the school age population has increased from 59.7 per cent in 1995 to 65.6 percent in 1998, the number of girls as proportion of school enrolment has increased from xx per cent to xx per cent. Similar increases have been registered at the next two levels of the education system

These achievements notwithstanding, the retention of girls remains a challenging problem which, according to research evidence, is highly attributable to the high direct and indirect costs of educating the girl child. To address this problem, scholarship scheme for girls has been introduced through an established trust fund. The principal aim of this scheme in the short term is to provide the necessary financial resources to all girls in the most deprived regions of the country. While, in the long run, it hopes to target all the girls at the two levels of the education system where high costs are incurred. Thus far, 1571 girls, representing about 14 percent of the girls in the junior secondary schools and about 5 per cent of girls in the Senior Secondary school will be provided with scholarships which will cover the cost of school fees, uniforms, books and learning materials.

Recognising the low enrolment of girls in the entire education system and its correlation with the gender distribution of teachers, a Remedial Initiative for Female Teachers (RIFT) programme has been introduced at the Teacher Training College to increase the access of female teachers to teacher training. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in the percentage of female teachers certified to teach from 61.2 per cent in 1995 to 68 per cent in 1998. This is also expected to have a positive effect on the number of female school administrators in the medium term.

Gender biases have also been observed in the school curriculum and since Beijing, the Department of State for Education, in partnership with development partners, has embarked on Curriculum revision to remove gender biases. Training manuals have thus been developed and to date, 600 teachers have been trained on the use of these manuals.

To demonstrate government's commitment to the empowerment of women and its recognition of the important role women contribute towards national development, Gender mainstreaming in government policy development is given top priority. At sectoral level therefore, policies are, out of necessity borne out of this underlying national development principle and are being closely monitored with gender sensitive qualitative and quantitative indicators.

Summary