Girls’ Opportunities to Access Learning (GOAL) Plus - Final Report

The aim of the GOAL Plus project was to build on the success of the previous GOAL project to improve primary school girls’ retention, attendance, and enrollment in 60 schools in Bong, Lofa, and Grand Bassa counties. To this end, GOAL Plus offered a scholarship program; Parent Teacher Association (PTA) capacity building and community grants to improve the learning environments of schools; an outreach awareness campaign to create support among parents and communities for girls’ education and appropriate age enrollment; whole-school health interventions; support to the Ministry of Education on topics related to girls’ education; and capacity building support to our local partner to strengthen their finance, administration, logistics, and monitoring and evaluation activities.

This final report shows that GOAL Plus was largely successful in meeting its targets. Some key findings:

• GOAL Plus conducted research to examine the effects of the project’s interventions on girls’ education, as well as communities’ ability to recover from the Ebola epidemic. A quantitative analysis of enrollment, attendance, completion, and promotion data found that schools that received additional services under GOAL Plus improved these outcomes for girls at those schools.
• The gains in student outcomes that were realized before the outbreak of Ebola were sustained once schools reopened and were not lost as a result of the outbreak.
• The gender gap, or the gap in outcomes between girls and boys, decreased for most grades and most outcomes.
• Most schools appeared to have improved school conditions over the period covered by GOAL Plus, with the largest changes at the comparison schools under GOAL that had not previously received supports.