Liberia took a historic stride toward educational gender equity as the Ministry of Education and collaborating partners launched the National Policy on Girls’ Education (NPGE) indicators scorecard at the 2025 Joint Education Sector Review held in Buchanan. This is according to the report by the Liberian Observer.
The launch underscores Liberia’s ongoing commitment to addressing historical gender disparities in education, a critical factor in the nation’s post-conflict recovery and long-term development. The NPGE itself, enacted as a forward-looking policy framework running through 2026, aims to promote gender equity and equality by ensuring girls receive high-quality, affordable education while tackling systemic obstacles that disproportionately affect female students.
Encouraging highlights from the scorecard include notable strides toward gender parity. Liberia has achieved near-system-wide gender parity in enrollment, with girls now comprising approximately half of all learners nationwide. The Gender Parity Index stands at or above 1.0 across primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary levels—meaning enrollment rates for girls match or exceed those for boys in many areas. Junior secondary completion rates for girls have shown particular improvement, surpassing benchmarks set in the national Education Sector Plan. Early childhood enrollment has also exceeded targets, and senior secondary enrollment for girls is performing above expectations in certain metrics, signaling momentum in keeping adolescent girls in school longer.
Despite these advances, the scorecard paints a sobering picture of entrenched challenges that continue to hinder full equity and retention. Key barriers include late school entry for many girls, persistently low completion rates—especially at the transition from junior to senior secondary—and heightened risks of early pregnancy, which often leads to dropout. Safety concerns, including gender-based violence (GBV) in and around school environments, remain a major deterrent. Additionally, the underrepresentation of female teachers limits role models and supportive learning spaces for girls.
One of the most alarming statistics is the infrastructure deficit: approximately 1,790 schools nationwide still lack basic sanitation facilities, such as toilets. This absence creates profound dignity, health, and attendance issues for menstruating girls, who may miss school days or drop out entirely due to inadequate facilities. Weak data systems and insufficient financing further compound these problems, making it difficult to target interventions effectively or scale successful programs.
The scorecard was developed under the EducateHER Project—a collaborative initiative led by organizations such as HOPE Liberia, the Paramount Young Women’s Initiative, and other local women’s groups, with support from development partners. This project has been instrumental in advocating for stronger policy implementation, evidence-based decision-making, and increased resource allocation for girls’ education. By producing this tool, EducateHER and the Ministry aim to foster accountability, guide targeted investments, and reshape policymaking through reliable, data-driven insights.
The report explicitly calls for urgent, multi-pronged actions: bolstering investments in safe and inclusive school infrastructure (including WASH—water, sanitation, and hygiene—facilities), enhancing prevention and response mechanisms for GBV, improving data collection and management systems for more accurate tracking, and significantly increasing overall education financing to close resource gaps.
Education stakeholders emphasized that advancing girls’ education is not merely a sectoral goal but a national imperative. Liberia’s future prosperity—economically, socially, and politically—hinges on empowering every girl to complete her education and contribute fully to society. With this scorecard serving as both a progress report and a call to action, the Ministry of Education, civil society, development partners, and the government now face the challenge of translating these findings into concrete policies and funding commitments that can accelerate meaningful change.
