We created this intervention because girls’ limited access to secondary education remains a major barrier to gender equality, human rights and sustainable development in Wolaita Zone, Ethiopia, and globally. Evidence shows that ensuring girls complete secondary school enables them to realise their rights, strengthens human capital, increases productivity and income, and contributes to poverty reduction. The benefits of girls’ success in secondary school extend beyond the individual to families, communities and future generations.
Despite this, many adolescent girls face systemic barriers that prevent them from transitioning to or completing secondary education, including poverty, unsafe or distant schools, harmful social norms and poor learning outcomes. These challenges limit girls’ literacy, numeracy, confidence and agency, reinforcing cycles of inequality.
A holistic, yet practical, innovation is needed to address these intersecting barriers to girls’ learning success.
Our holistic, ecosystem-based model addresses barriers to learning from different entry points (school, community, education system) for maximum impact within the limited timeframe of an intervention:
• ‘Enhanced Teaching and Learning’ engages teachers and students through a variety of activities that target the core of the teaching and learning process for better local language, English and maths outcomes. Interventions include contextually relevant Social and Emotional Learning activities, teacher training in structured inclusive pedagogy which is gender- and disability- responsive, embedded follow-up coaching and mentoring support through the middle-tier, and communities of practice.
• ‘Strengthening Leadership and Supervision’ ensures that literacy and numeracy improvements are not isolated interventions but part of a coordinated, scalable, and government driven initiative co-created and co-adapted with government stakeholders, providing a strong bridge between policy and practice.
• ‘Parental and Community Engagement’ increases parental involvement in children's literacy and numeracy development, reinforcing, extending and applying what they learn in school to better their chances of improving their literacy and numeracy skills.
• ‘Scaling and Sustainability’ instils agency in mid and higher-level government to lead improvements in pedagogy and school leadership, while strengthening the sustainability of interventions within the target area.
Our innovation has been delivered in partnership with the government of Ethiopia for over 12 years. A total of 61,345 girls (and 68,000 boys) across 144 schools in four woredas (districts) of Wolaita Zone benefitted between 2013 and 2024. The Zonal Education Office scaled selected interventions beyond target woredas, reaching an additional 500 government schools, over 12,000 teachers and over 460,000 learners across all woredas of Wolaita Zone. Interventions selected to scale include teacher training approaches, leadership training, middle tier coaching and mentoring and mother and father support groups.
In addition, the gender and inclusion structured pedagogy and coaching and mentoring approaches will be used across 124 schools and over 15,000 learners in the Gates Foundation Numeracy Research and Development project.
Elements of the innovation have also been contextualised and delivered by Link Education's other partners in Malawi and Uganda, such as the Social and Emotional Learning intervention. In Uganda these materials were revised by the Ministry of Education's Gender Task Force and used to support over 1,000 learners. In Malawi the materials were adapted for over 6,000 out-of-school adolescents. Both projects have shown increases in attendance, transition and learning outcomes for girls and other marginalised groups.
In response to baseline findings we strengthened the school-based numeracy intervention, including incorporating numeracy teacher training, assessing gaps in numeracy teaching, observing numeracy classes, intensifying follow-up coaching and mentoring of teachers for regular feedback and support and developing high-quality numeracy training materials to improve the teaching of numeracy in supported schools.
In response to reading comprehension outcomes at midline, we established and supported reading corners in schools, provided schools with reading books and conducted additional teacher training on teaching reading.
Also see adaptations for other contexts in the 'how has it been spreading' question.
After securing the buy-in of key partners including District, Regional and National government departments of education, contact Link for full details of the innovation and to receive links to publicly available teacher training and school leadership resources, as well as the external evaluation which contains useful guidance.
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