Education access and retention for educationally marginalised children: Innovations in social protection

Argues for increased cooperation between social protection initiatives and the education sector

Published by: Mobile Task Team on the Impact of HIV/AIDS on Education (MTT) , 2005
Via: Eldis

This report looks at the effectiveness of social protection programmes for educationally marginalised children (EMC) in Eastern and Southern Africa.16 case studies were selected from ten countries, representing a range of programmes judged to be more or less innovative, with the potential to provide insights and lessons for scale up and replication. A review of the case studies suggests that while all of the programmes provide a varying measure of social protection to EMC, the comparative scale of some of these programmes and the lack of coordination with others may limit their impact and value. The report also notes that integration of this coordinated response with existing National Plans of Action (NPAs) could open the way to a broader scope for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) and EMC service provision.

Given that the scale of the EMC and OVC crisis in Africa is only beginning to emerge, and in the knowledge that it will shadow the HIV crisis for decades to come, the report suggests that the education sector is faced with a stark choice: embrace and mainstream social protection as an integral function of education’s mandate or abandon any real prospect of achieving the national and international goals to which the sector has long committed. The paper reinforces that social protection lies at the intersection of the education sector’s interests and commitments. It suggests that that this is a unique, strategic opportunity to mobilise the multi-sectoral, NGO and community partnerships that the education sector has so long contemplated but not yet fully operationalised.