 So this is a panel discussion. These are the panelists today. The panel discussion with moderated by Professor Asha Khakanwa. She is the president of coal and a strong advocate for girls education and for the empowerment of women. And she's been recognized multiple times through honorary doctorates for her work in this field, as well as in promoting open distance and flexible learning more broadly. Professor Kanwa will introduce all the rest of the panelists. So over to you, Professor Kanwa, and we can exit the slideshare. Thank you, Tony. Welcome to everyone. Today we have a really outstanding panel to discuss really an issue, which is very important, as we try to, you know, recover from the pandemic. Let me introduce our distinguished panelists first. You can see the honorable Dr. Unity Dow. She's in Botswana. She's a very famous human rights activist, a lawyer, a former judge, and has been a minister several times over including a minister of education, and a minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation. She also has been a very strong advocate for girls education, women's rights, and very well known in Africa for precisely those reasons. So you are most welcome honorable Dr. Unity Dow. It's really a privilege to have you on the panel. Let me also introduce now from the Caribbean. Another very iconic figure. Priya Manikchand, who's the Minister of Education in Guyana. She's an attorney at law. And also, of course, she's been a minister. Again, in the past Minister of Human Services now is the Minister of Education. And she's firmly committed to developing education, not just in Guyana, but in the entire Caribbean region, especially for women and girls. So welcome, Minister Manikchand. We can't see you, but have we lost the minister. Then we've got my colleagues. We have Frances Ferrera, who has so much experience in the Commonwealth. And in fact, she was the first woman mayor in her home country in Namibia. She has been called specialist for girls inspire and has made a difference to the lives of thousands of women and girls by helping them develop skills. So that child early and forced marriages were averted. So welcome Francis. And then Tony Mays, who is my colleague in open schooling is also our editor of the Journal of Learning for Development, which is really going from strength to strength under his leadership. Right in teacher education distance learning open schooling, and is making a difference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of children through calls open schooling initiative. He again brings an African and a pan Commonwealth perspective to this panel. So I think we've got a very good kind of range of perspectives. Really enriching and important discussion. So let me just say a little bit about calls perspective welcome back, Minister you've been introduced, but at that time we lost you but now I think people can see you. So just a bit about calls position on this. We all know that the Commonwealth of learning is committed to promoting learning for sustainable development and women's equality and empowerment are central to that vision. So how do we achieve it. Call uses distance learning and technologies, particularly to reach the unreached women and girls in developing countries. We all know that there's a huge digital divide across the world. And we promote the use of technologies that are available affordable and accessible. So we don't leave anyone behind. We also know that one size doesn't fit all. And if technologies have to be effective, they must be placed in an appropriate social political and economic context. Well that in the poorest countries. Women are 33% less likely to use the internet than men. And during this pandemic we found that in sub Saharan Africa, more than 60% learners were excluded from online learning. So I mean if we have to use technology options, we have to be mindful of this broader context. And also just, you know, highlight two or three facts from the impact that the pandemic has had on girls education. The Malala fund report. The most recent one on July 13 said that more than 20 million secondary school age girls could be out of school after the COVID-19 crisis has passed. That you know when the Ebola crisis hit West Africa then in Sierra Leone and in Liberia, the girls were less likely to return than boys and they didn't return. So how do we avert that we know that this could happen. What can we do to avert it. Another startling fact is that after the pandemic up to 1 million girls in sub Saharan Africa may never go back to school because of pregnancy, all happening during this COVID-19. So that's another issue that we need to consider when we look for proposals going forward. The other thing which has happened is learning loss learning loss generally because of, and this is learning loss related to curriculum because of school closures. And studies show that it is expected that girls in lower low and lower middle income countries are going to be disproportionately impacted due to this, you know, learning loss that we are talking about. Last year towards the end of last year there is an NGO called opportunity in Pakistan, which looked at the impact of COVID-19 on girls. And they've, they found that and the most concerning finding was the disparity in the parents attitudes to sending girls back to school. 31% parents said that they would like to send the girls back to school, as compared to 94% for boys. And then when the schools actually reopened 60% of the girls didn't return. These are very alarming facts, and we have to all complement and supplement each other's efforts to see what we can do to ensure that we are prepared to deal with this crisis. So with that, let me invite our panelists. I'll start with Tony first to set the general context, followed by the Honourable Dr. Unity Tao followed by Francis Ferreira and Honourable Priya Manik Chen. So Tony. Thank you prof colleagues I'm going to ask another colleague of mine to share the screen because you know what happens when you do these things online your laptop stops working properly. So I'm going to be talking about sort of the broad perspective from an open schooling point of view. Next slide please. Just to put the context reminding us what Prof has just said, around 214 million children globally have had schooling disrupted in one way or another. But even before the pandemic, there were about 300 million children out of school in any case, with the majority of them being girls why is this so. Next slide. So it raises the question of why it's so important that we get girls into school if they haven't had an opportunity before, or backing to school if they've dropped out as a result of the pandemic or other reasons. Next slide. So partly it's an ethical issue. All children have the right to an education. It shouldn't matter what sex people are at birth, or what their subsequent sexual orientation is as they grow up. They have a right to education it's an ethical issue. Next slide. Even if you are not convinced by the ethical reasons that what is morally good. There is also an economic argument to be made. If we could have gender equality, all indications are that we could grow the world economy, every country would benefit from having more girls and women actively involved. Furthermore, next slide. If we focus particularly on girls and women, there is a multiplier effect. We have a positive impact on lots of other issues at the same time. So for ethical and economic reasons it is good for girls to complete schooling. So what are the barriers, why is it that we're not achieving 100% girls in school and being successful. Next slide. What it is to do in some countries with traditions and ways of doing things and cultural norms in many countries, girls are married fairly early. And once they're married as as young teenagers, they often do not get the opportunity to go back to school. So they, they miss out and then cannot become active participants in the economy. We also have a problem in many Commonwealth countries that children have to work to help support the family. And this happens with both boys and with girls. If we don't address this issue. Once those children grow up, they probably will not come back into schooling and will be always marginalized from the economy. And that links to directly to questions of poverty. If you if you don't have much income coming into the household, the cost of school uniform school fees school transport, the opportunity cost of not being able to be in gainful employment, all of those can militate against children accessing schooling and girl children in particular, many families in many countries will prioritize if they can only send one child to school will send the boy to school rather than the girl. Next slide. We also have some logistical challenges, there are many schools that do not even have separate ablution facilities for girls, which obviously becomes highly problematic and a very, very big barrier towards girls accessing normal schooling. In addition, in many societies, girls are expected to help the mother and the parents in the household so they have other duties to the family as well that militate them regularly attending school. Next slide. Another problem, various studies have shown that a lot of the messages built into school textbooks are not conveying positive messages for girls and women. We need learning materials that show that women can be engineers, they can be astronauts, they can be science scientists. So we need to look at the gender equality the gender messages that are in content and curricula. Next slide. So is open schooling, are we able to help with open schooling and addressing these kinds of issues. Next slide. And to some extent by using open distance learning methods we can create greater access. We can have more flexibility and choice about what to study when to study how quickly to study. We can by regularly updating curriculum and content improve quality, we can allow children to study at their own pace maybe doing one subject at a time and writing it off instead of taking 10 subjects at the same time. And we can do something about the costs. Generally open distance learning provision is cheaper. And now nowadays what we're doing is instead of supplying expensive copyrighted textbooks, we're making the content available as open educational resources. Increasingly in many of the projects I'm working in, it is now cheaper to supply a tablet that is preloaded with digitally interactive OER. That is cheaper than actually supplying a whole pile of paper based textbooks. But of course it's not a question of one size fits all what we're working one country will not necessarily work in another country. Next slide. So for example in India, we have the largest open school in the world the National Institute of Open Schooling. They have embraced technology very widely in one of their massive open online courses as you can see here in one single cohort they trained 1.4 million school teachers. So once you once you have people having access to technology and open educational resources, there's great potential for scale, but obviously not every country has the connectivity and the devices to be able to work in that way. So next slide. So in our cases, we're using more traditional methods. So for example in Kenya towards the end of last year to help out of school children to help children in school who were struggling. We put together over 1000 short videos on different topics in the school curriculum. We passed them on television reaching we think about 150,000 learners at any one time. And then we backed them all up onto YouTube. And the last time I checked after four months over 35,000 children and teachers had also accessed the backup videos. But sometimes we can't do that either. Next slide. So the project that I just had in Nigeria. We actually had to go out into the community. We went out on motorbike. We used a narrow casting technology solar powered narrow casting technology you can maybe able to see the speaker in the tree there to go to communities to call the students to come and to engage with them about what their learning needs are and to give them a bit of fun to show that you can come back into schooling and it can be quite fun. So there's no one size fits all there are lots of different ways in which we can use open schooling to support children and particularly girls who are not in school for various reasons. Unless we address those underlying challenges, we're not going to to be able to reach all the children so open schooling is one part of the problem. One part of the solution but that we have to look at the bigger socio economic issues as well. Next slide. One of the things that we are finding is that as we move into open distance learning and particularly using technology. This has increasingly become a preferred option for some children with disabilities, because many of our schools were not designed. Many of our day schools were not designed to accommodate children with disabilities. And so open distance learning can be one way of opening access for them as well. If you'd like to read more about this. This presentation is based on chapter eight in our new open schooling book, which we published in December last year. Next slide. And then finally, if as a result of the discussions that we have in this in this webinar in this panel discussion if you think there's an opportunity for coal to support your work in getting girls back into school. Please contact me after, and I'll send you a proposal template and we can discuss possibilities for working together. So thank you very much and back to Professor can work. Thank you Tony. For that overview of what are the barriers that prevent girls from accessing education and what are some of the solutions. And you're proposing open schooling. Now, we know that open schooling has always responded to the needs of the hour. For example, in the early days you know in the prairies in Canada, or in remote homesteads in the middle school had no schools in the neighborhood for miles and miles. So how did they educate their children through open schools you know which meant that they received instructional materials in print form and the parents help the students. Now that was a constraint of geography at that time you know in distance. And everything had to close down this again you know we've come full cycle, and people have had to parents and siblings have had to help you know children access education everybody is not connected to technology. Everybody doesn't have highly educated parents, and yet somehow you know the people did whatever they could to ensure that learning continued in whatever form they could. So I think the main point which comes out is that in the past. Everything was there as it had a social mission you know, addressing issues of social justice reach reaching people who could not be otherwise reach through, you know, physical schools. Now today it's going to be another opportunity for us, especially when girls are on the verge of dropping out because open schools are more flexible. In some countries, for example, in India they cost about one tenth of what it costs to put a child through a government supported secondary school. In Namibia it costs one fifth. So the cost is definitely affordable. It's flexible you can study on weekends you can study in the evening you don't have to go to a physical school. And it's also good quality, as we can see from the learning outcomes and other kind of quality parameters so I think this is a viable option, especially when resources are going to be scarce going forward. This could be a potential solution for us. So I think the point to take away from here is that here is one possible option, which is an alternative approach to brick and mortar institutions. So on that note, let me invite the honorable Dr unity now for her presentation. Thank you very much, Professor for that for that invitation and thinking about the issue of how do you get girls into school. How would you ensure that they remain in school, and how do you, you know, promote their return to school in the event that they drop out. So I'm thinking about really asking like three questions, really based on my experience in being on board of schools and also my experience as when I was the Minister of Education here in Botswana. And the first question is, where and when are girls children unsafe. And the second question is, what is the nature of the harm they're exposed to. And thirdly, how does that harm affect that getting back to school. And or, and once I school in remaining school, and if they drop out returning to school. I would no doubt, you know, talk, you know, or touch on some of the things that Tony may spoke about. But the first one and when our girls unsafe. I think we can all accept that generally the safest space for children during the day is in school that many poor schools, many not so great schools. And of course it'll be the occasion. Occasionally when harm will be fall to a child or school but in the majority of cases, or the major educators around the world are professionals who actually do educate who guide and I think very importantly, supervised, you know, children. You know, so they provide that supervision that is necessary. And I think it is, it is my experience that homes, especially homes that are finished and deprived can be very boring spaces and engaging spaces with the result that children go into the streets. And that's really where I say, you know, it is a space between the home, you know, and the school. There's a dangerous space for children, literally the streets, you know, when during lockdown you see children loitering in the streets, you know, adult entertainment places. In private vehicles, kids are driven back to school in private vehicles in buses in taxis. And as a minister of education, I was surprised the extent to which actually these actually terribly unsafe spaces, you know, for children. When do we see the greatest harm, you know, to children. I say it is generally during really two areas, one during transitioning from one segment of education to the other. We find that, you know, from my experience is the transition from primary to junior school junior secondary, that's actually unsafe transition from junior to secondary to senior unsafe transition to senior and tertiary unsafe. And why, you know, why is this so, I think transitions, you know, we forget, I mean like transitions generally are marked by celebration for some activity. Doesn't matter what it is, whether you get married, whether you know any transition in life, you know it's going to be marked by some special activity. The 12 year old was so pleased, shaft with herself that she did great in, you know, in primary schools going next year to junior secondary, but how does she celebrate this. I don't think, you know, we haven't think about the extent to which actually happiness celebration, you know, can actually to harm if it is not organized if there's no safe space to actually to end up doing this. The 16 year old who's going to senior school next year, it's more likely to feel so happy with herself that she's going to go to the local bar. You know, because there isn't any spaces for children outside homes, especially in poor neighborhoods, you know that they can do that they can celebrate their successes be happy about themselves. But then the second area, space of unsafe space for children is during school holidays. In many of the commonwealth countries, school holidays are very long. If you are in a poor neighborhood, you know, they're generally unsupervised time for a whole month, a month and a half sometimes, and they're totally unengaged young people will find something to do. And if there's no space safe space for them to do those things, they will find themselves in, you know, I am safe place and therefore it's not, it's not surprising that school closures, you know, will lead, you know, to children falling within the cracks, and never going back. And, you know, what are the most, you know, common types of harm that default children who are not in school pregnancy or you know that illness. I was surprised when I was at the means of education to find how many kids don't come back to school, because they were just ill. You know, a broken leg can actually lead a child to never go back to school. You know, an illness may be brought on by maybe an unhealthy, you know, lifestyle or just really simple illness. Of course, you know, other behavior like alcohol use or drug use. But also, you know, and I think Tony touched on this really is caretaking. You see, you know, taking care of suddenly a child is available for longer than a week. And suddenly, then there's going to throw a task. And then the family almost cannot afford to let her back to go back to school. They're so used to have actually filling in a little gap or that huge gap, maybe it's not so, so little, you know, and then, you know, I often I used to, when I was in the application compared to a volunteer in 10 who comes to work for you. You didn't think you needed a third hand at all. But suddenly they become so useful that you don't, you know, you even are offering them in our job to stay on. So I think often girls who stay out of school for too long, end up actually being, you know, little mothers, so to speak. And therefore the family doesn't feel that they can actually, they feel so comfortable or they feel so like, you know, they plug this hole that they didn't realize existed before. So I think it's important to realize that all kids end up doing other jobs or they just become, you know, so become uninterested in school, uninterested in school because they end up doing something else. You know, and there's no push for them to go back, they will not go back. So, of course, so case we drop out of school, then of course I've got a young one to take care of, you know, the cost, you know, implication of that. And, you know, if they're taking care, taking responsibilities, I fend up and the challenge never really allowed anyone to go back, you know, and the question for me is what are the opportunities here and I think, you know, first of all, I'm really focusing a lot of my attention in how once they are in school, how do we ensure they remain in school so that we, you know, we're limited to go out and reach them when they're out of school? So how do we promote remaining in school? I really think that if you look at traditional schools, they are run from facilities that are unused for one quarter of the day every day, all weekends, and all holidays. These are first expensive facilities across the world that really are used for very limited, you know, because schools do close. So the questions, you know, can we use, can we piggyback open learning on to existing brick schools so that it's part of the policy of government to actually make sure that education will be within bricks, but also we will collapse these walls to make sure that we reach kids even from that so that a school does not call itself only a school if it's only offering day learning. And school holidays, like I said, pose a serious danger to girls. So I guess I think engaging girls during holidays can limit their failure to return to school. Again, open and online engagement during school holidays, I think it's very important because then they continue, they have something interest, it doesn't have to be homework, because kids were doing work for three months, they don't want to do it again during that summer. They are winter with whatever break, can we have programs that actually reach kids in entertaining kids so that they actually want to log on, not to learn, but to play to be entertained, and therefore to have a link between school and home during holidays. And I think it's very important to have an intentional transition management and guidance. You know, for girls as they transition from one segment of education to another. Again, this can be done, you know, in school but also open and online, really programs curricula that we develop and say, you know, how do you, you know, engage young girls to facilitate that transition. And lastly, really is obvious when the greater collaboration between education and social services. And in many countries, there's a very disconnect between, you know, that if you're in a school, then you're somebody who has this problem. And so really I think a greater collaboration between these two segments I think you very much I'm sorry I hope I didn't take too much time. Thank you, Professor. Absolutely fascinating thank you. Thank you, honorable Dr unity down. I think you've made some very important points that. Yes, school open school is an answer. But I think it's not replacing the physical and mortar structure which is very important and we love the importance of that during the pandemic. In fact, those schools are providing safe spaces for children who otherwise have nowhere else to go and you know in some countries like India. They're also providing nutrition because they have a midday scheme. And that's the only good meal that they get in the whole day when they go to school so it's of course very important for the social interaction with other children feeling safe and you know being part of childhood. That is very important and another thing which came out during this pandemic is this whole need for focusing on mental health and well being of everyone, teachers and children. We have never bothered about it in the past you know we just looked at cognitive abilities in schools. This is an issue which came out more importantly now. And the other thing is that how do we actually empower children, you know to stay in school, you raise that question. Now in some countries they are providing bicycles to girls. And the studies show that when the girls have bicycles they feel more empowered, the attendance goes up, and they are not harassed by boys on their way to school because they speed up and get there faster. So you know that there are initiatives taking place which help girls to stay in school, but the other question which you raised about you know what how can we use distance learning now, going forward. And I think it's a very important solution to this whole issue of learning loss. You know in the past in Pakistan when they had an earthquake, and for three months the schools were closed. When the children came back to school, the teachers continued as if it was business as usual, and the learning loss which they measured was one and a half years. But in cases where there is a targeted approach to providing remedial classes to make up for the learning loss people found great deal of kind of benefit. The teachers use open and distance learning as that remedial bridge between the learning loss and the return to school. I mean I hadn't thought about it but your question made me think about it so I think this becomes an answer that even when we have brick and mortar schools. And the other point is that learning doesn't have to take place you know within a certain time frame between nine to two or whatever. It has shown us it can happen anytime of night or day. So, within the class outside the class and if we are going to have that kind of you know 24 seven learning opportunity then distance learning becomes the answer. So with that let me invite honorable Priya Manik Chen for her intervention honorable minister you're muted as yet. Hello. Good morning. I am also getting help with the screen sharing because I'm bound to be somewhere at page one and find myself at page 10. So I'm getting help with God who's right next to me. I'm very glad we're having this particular forum. The school closures have been extremely hard on on the world's children and definitely hard on us here in Guyana. And we have learned a couple of lessons we've done more than we've ever done before to engage children outside of the classroom traditionally we have only ever for the history of our country. We engaged our children through teacher in front of the classroom children seated in benches. And so it was a real challenge and in fact for about five months after we close schools. We did nothing every it was almost like deer and headlights the system did not respond at all. Suffice it to say we were also in an extended election period and that did not help, because everything else collapsed around trying to get an elected government in place. So, from then to now we've made so many interventions regarding how we could deliver education on through distance means. And we have done this through television we've done this through online platforms like zoom and Google Classroom and even WhatsApp and Facebook messages. We have created worksheets we have taught on the radio. We have done all of that. And I would venture to say with these that we did more here in Guyana than any other country in these parts of the world. And this part of the world that in the Caribbean region in South America, America, but we also see very clearly how with all of that effort and quite a bit of expenditure. We just had mock examinations for our grade six that's the exit exam from primary to secondary. And with all of those interventions we still saw from mock exam one 2,600 children missing. These are 10 and 11 year olds, and they had the option of taking this exam at home so it's not as though parents were afraid to send them into schools. We still saw results that were so poor. I wanted to lock my door and cry. I'm nowhere near there as yet. I'm just chatting for now. I haven't started my presentation as yet I'm just saying that it was very clear to us that we have not. Even with the best of intention and all the resources reform from what we know, and what we've become accustomed to into distance education effectively to meet our children so that they get the quality of education they need in this time and so that's just an indication to begin with. We also partnered in this time with profaturo to train all not some 100% of our teachers in the usage of ICT and innovative means. And then we partnered with the providers of cellular and data so that any usage on those platforms would expend nothing from the teachers. Even with all of that we still see some serious gaps in the delivery of education. I will begin now. So cool. I can one moment please. Yes, but I can't read that because this is here. Sorry. Globally it has been recognized that an investment in the education of girls goes well beyond merely correcting the gender equality imbalance and has significant national developmental benefits. We have embraced the fact that education of girls impacts the age of initial childbirth, and a number of children conceived, the value of education passed on to future generations, the earning capacity of women in our society and their degree of social participation within the society, among other significant benefits. Importantly addressing the needs of girls requires approaches that go well beyond the traditional schooling experiences. Even further, the existing pandemic has brought the issues around girls education into sharp focus. The guy and the guy and experience, like our sister territories in the Caribbean or experience regarding girls education differs from some other parts of the world. Where, where girls are denied access and are marginalized from the educational processes. Our reality is defined by the number of girls enrolled in education exceeding that of the boys on many levels, even a tertiary. Beyond that the performance of females has outstripped that of their male counterparts for a considerable period, and is expected to continue. This has led us to investigations into the phenomenon called the feminization of education within our jurisdictions. Taken on the surface. This might suggest that the experiences of girls in our society is devoid of issues and challenges. The existing reality, however, is that we have had to delve way beyond the superficial appearances to develop a deeper understanding of where socio cultural socio economic political and other issues create structural barriers to the effective education of girls. In this presentation I will highlight some of our findings and some strategies device to date to address issues within this context. The social realities of our time dictate the need to be considerably flexible and responsive to changing needs around girls education. One of our most significant findings is that many of the realities are highly contextual and demand responses that emphasize relevance and suitability. The following factors are considered significant today educational experience of girls traditionalism and urban rural divide. Social ill such as teenage pregnancy and gender based violence menstruation and its related contextual realities socio economic and geographic factors. Regarding the traditionalism and urban rural divide in many parts of our society traditional concepts regarding gender roles persist. The status of teenage marriage though not prevalent still impacts perceptions of girls as well as the age of initial sexual engagement. Girls continue to be subjected to traditional domestic demands that sometimes adversely affect their educational roles and responsibilities. And before I move on particularly in this lockdown where parents had to work we saw that the older girls and you know older is such a relative term. But the girls in the home had the responsibility of looking after the younger sibling siblings, and so their online schooling was seriously affected. Social ill is our country is still affected by a high rate of teenage pregnancy. A Ministry of Public Health 2018 situation analysis analysis placed Guyana among the top three highest rates in the region with 90 out of 1000 girls 15 to 19 year olds, giving birth during the 2010 to 2015 period. Gender based violence against girls continues to be an issue within the education system, reflecting pervasive patterns within our society. The first comprehensive national survey conducted by the UN in 2019 on gender based violence revealed that Guyana that in Guyana, more than half 55% of all women experienced at least one form of violence. In addition and related contextual realities a recent study that we conducted here within the last I think six weeks indicated that girls menstrual cycle have negatively impacted their educational experiences on various levels. Among the prevailing issues are their access to sanitary pads physical and emotional distress and cultural dynamics affecting their treatment during their menstrual cycles, as well as in flexible school rules and regulations. Socio economic and geographic factors, and many of our poorest enclaves decisions are made that oftentimes steer girls away from education. In the deep interland and river in regions the commencement of formal education is adversely affected due to factors such as distance and the modes of accessing school. Due to the displacing effects of COVID-19 and other issues identified numerous inventive interventions have been conducted to facilitate the continued education of girls, as well as the reintegration of teenage mothers health and family life skills for life training and care packages for adolescent mothers adversely affected by COVID in hinterland regions. Additional support for COVID related issues such as stress, grief, fear, anxiety, depression, anger and suicide in various regions. A national campaign for free distribution of sanitary napkins to students is being devised as we speak. In addition to top meals, boats, bicycles, shoes and school uniforms, uniforms to support education is underway. Distribution of worksheet and study materials for all students at all levels of the education system. The introduction of pedagogical and curricular approaches aimed at addressing learning loss at all levels. And recently the introduction of a cash grant for every student across the country to assist. It was not meant for COVID but it has really come in well during this period where many have lost jobs because of the pandemic and prices have gone up like they have all across the world. In conclusion, we are committed to improving the experience of girls in education by devising various strategies for improving the quality of education offered across all levels of the system in Guyana. In addition, we continue to work to ascertain and address any gender specific issues impacting their educational experiences. I thank you. I'd be happy to do two things. Answer any questions in and around these, but also to share some of the material or any or all of the material we have created over the last six months for television, for worksheets or for any other. And we have radio instruction on those forms we'd be happy to share it with any country that needs it. We have very similar curricula in many of these countries, especially in this region, and we would be glad to transfer that that information and knowledge that we've required over the last few months. If it's required. Thank you, Mr for that absolutely interesting and insightful presentation. It's good to know the practical steps which you are taking and you know my question is that. Is it because you know these things at first hand being a woman yourself that you've got into you know the specifics of exactly what girls need you know like hot meals sanitary pads bicycles and so on. Which is, which is going to really make a small step but will make a huge difference to girls education in the country. And so Professor, here's the thing. I say this with deep shame. I did not realize until we did the research recently and the survey. How affected girls are when they're on their period. We the numbers were staggering that girls lose three to five days every month and when you multiply that across 12 months. And I'm not talking about a few I'm talking about a large enough number to cause me great worry. I'm a female, and I get my period and I have had it in school and I did not realize these were some of the impacts, because of different circumstances. Mr mays raised earlier, if you'd one of the issues was how comfortable do you feel changing your sanitary napkin in the facilities that are provided at the school. Because they didn't feel these are teenagers they're adolescents they're already going through so much. They didn't feel comfortable making those changes because of the facilities that are provided and then just access to sanitary napkins and to enough to have the change that is the frequent changes that are required so I didn't realize it and I'm right here. I should have known that I should have done better until we we actually did a poll on this because I started seeing some questions in and around it and the first lady of Guyana started a national program. Well, where she said she was talking to some girls and this came up as an issue and so she started national program to help fund sanitary napkins for all high school girls. You know, I'm so glad we're talking about it because in many traditional societies in the Commonwealth. You know this whole business of menstruation period sanitary napkins is sort of you know swept under the carpet and kept you know behind closed doors. So now people are making films about it people are talking about it and I think we are moving towards the kind of you know solution. But the other issues which you raised in this particular presentation were which were not raised before is about gender based violence. Now which of course honorable unity down mentioned about you know safe safe spaces and how children are not in safe spaces if they're out of school. The other is about boys under performance which is a very specific issue related to the Caribbean to Pacific and Southern Africa some of the small states. And what we can do to actually ensure that we take the underperforming boys along as well through targeted approaches. Another issue which you raised was about authentic assessments you know that one of the big casualties in this whole pandemic was how do we actually assess and evaluate performance offline because we do proctored exams in schools. Now suddenly we were left without any of those options. So that's another area where we need to rethink what we do. The final point which came out was what you said about relevance that how relevant is our schooling because everybody is not going to university after secondary school. And this is one thing which Tony is doing is you know, strengthening the vocational stream in secondary education through open schooling so that you know that becomes a terminal stage and people can go for livelihoods. After the secondary school is over because they have the vocational skills, which do equip them for livelihoods. So I think with that, we'll keep it for the further discussion. Anything from you. Now Francis, let me invite you. And then I'll invite honorable. Dr. Dow. Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Thank you, Professor Kanwar. It's always difficult to come in in the end and to decide what to drop and what not to drop from what you originally planned to say because some of the things were said already. And I think I will just go with what I originally planned to say and it will fit into what some people already has mentioned education for girls is more than just access. It is about feeling safe in the classroom, supported in subjects and careers of their choice. In other words, it means gender equality should be central in the teaching and learning environment, the curriculum, the learning resources, including active involvement of communities. Girls education and support to women and girls is at the center of the work that I am doing here at the Commonwealth of learning. And before I provide suggestions on how we can bring girls back to school. I thought to pause and provide context for where my contribution is situated. Over the past five years, we have been working with NGOs to provide livelihoods and skills training as well as reintegrating girls into school. This project calls girls inspire placed an emphasis on reaching underserved women and girls in communities across Bangladesh, Pakistan Sri Lanka, India Tanzania and Mozambique. For these women and girls, formal education may not be always available or an option for them to complete or maintain focus. Our main focus was to empower them and providing them with support to return to school. Very important. The president earlier mentioned about skills after school or part of the school. So there is, they can move back to school or from school they can go to tertiary institutions where they do technical skills. Our specific focus was providing life skills, livelihood skills and also reintegrating them into schools. As you can see from the data, we followed a holistic approach working not only with women and girls, but also with communities, including men and boys, prospective employers. The statistics speak for itself, but I want to draw your attention to the number of community members, which we have reached because I want to come back to that theme. I also want to draw your attention to the number that we have reintegrated back into schools as well as the community mentorship clubs established. So the challenge that we are here, the reason that we are here today is because of this challenge that out of all those millions out of school, 129 million are girls. And that challenge was further exacerbated by COVID-19, but that was not the only thing that COVID-19 did. More girls dropped out of school because being vulnerable to gender-based violence, child marriage, child labour and early pregnancy and these issues were mentioned before, but it was even more intense during COVID. But that is not the only thing COVID did. COVID also exposed the significant gender gaps in women's and girls' rights and revealed the inequities of the system in a new light. And these would be access to justice, discriminatory laws, restrictions on legal capacity of women, the gender-based digital divide, lack of women in leadership in decision-making positions, and lack of access to health services. Those were the things, but COVID also gave us the opportunity to address the weaknesses in the system. However, to truly transform the education system and to bring girls back to school, we should use a gender equality lens. Gender is intersectional. It is impacted by many other social issues. It's not only gender in isolation. So how can we get girls back to school? Professor Kanwar also referred to girls on bicycles. This specific image is one of girls who are advocating for bringing girls back to school in a village in Pakistan as part of the work that we are doing at the Commonwealth of Learning. In my opinion, the departure point to get girls back to school is the community. Those of us were coming from earlier generations would remember how important the community was in our education. The space, as Dr. Gow said, between the house and going to school was not as dangerous many, many, many decades ago because the community were the caretakers. They took care of the girls as they moved from one place to the other space. We know that social norms shape acceptable roles, opportunities and behaviors for women and men in society and the household. And these gender stereotypes are deeply entrenched in the communities and our experience with the Girls Inspire project was that the community mobilization increased the understanding in the communities of the negative effects of child marriage, of not sending girls to school, and it also increased their understanding of the benefits of sending girls back to school. This image is from a village in Malawi where we spoke to communities and girls as to bringing those girls sitting there back into school. In our work then we had targeted messages for the community leaders, the parents and other using various media, including street theater advocacy campaigns and community meetings, establishing community support groups to ensure that they support and monitor the girls attendance. We developed a guide for community mentoring to ensure the collective support in communities, as you could see from my first slide, we established over 360 community mentorship clubs. In course new six-year plan, we will continue to work with policymakers, local authorities, communities, families and traditional leaders, very important part of the rural communities, traditional leaders to increase awareness of gender equality and to bring about changes in dominant social norms. Sorry. The next one is to ensure that girls are safe in schools. As we can see 246 million, according to UNICEF, children experience violence in and around school every year. And in my further reading, I found that 60 million girls per day across the world are exposed to gender-based violence. So the second action is really to ensure that the schools are safe spaces and use that safe space as an incentive to bring girls back to school. The image here is where we are training school boards and teachers in Malawi about gender-based violence and gender equality to ensure that they are aware of this. We work with school boards, parents and teacher associations, victim support units, mothers groups, traditional authorities, aid teachers, teachers, and very importantly, the girls and boys who are dropping out from school are part of the discussion. So we train them on the government's re-admission policy, because in many countries, while there is a re-admission policy for girls who fell pregnant and dropped out of school, many teachers do not know how to deal with it. Many school management, they do not know how to deal with it. The girls are supposed to come back in a safe environment, but they come back to a hostile and judgmental environment. And those are the issues that need to be dealt with. It doesn't help to have re-admission policy, and then that policy doesn't have a protection for those girls when they come back. So safe spaces. So due to our involvement, there is this example in the training teachers and school boards on the re-admission policy. Two students from the primary school in Malawi, 15 and 16 years, respectively. The girl got pregnant and the parents started arranging for the two of them to get married. But because of the involvement of our concern of our partner in Malawi, concerned youth organization, because of their involvement and explaining to the family that there are legal and human rights implications for getting these two children married. That marriage was averted. The boy was allowed back in school. The girl was then after the birth of the baby, she participated in our skills training. And once the baby is stronger enough, she plans to go back to school. But if it wasn't for this type of work, she wouldn't have had that opportunity. The next one that I'm suggesting is scaling up gender sensitive ODL. I'm focusing on the word gender sensitive, because we have had ODL for as long as I can remember. And recently, because of COVID and because of focusing our attention on gender based violence, we have to be conscious and we have to change this language here. To ensure the provision of gender sensitive ODL, it is important to understand that women and girls face unique barriers. COVID has given us an opportunity to better understand the gender differences in access and learning in distance education. We should be considered to improve gender responsive distance education. In this last year, relevant technology previous speakers have talked about it is the first criteria when we consider gender sensitive ODL. Marginalized girls will have less access. Professor Kanra mentioned that already. Dr Dow spoke at length about the safety of girls in spaces. Now, one such space is the online space. It is critical to incorporate digital safeguarding for girls. One of the world's school age children or 1.3 billion age 3 to 17 do not have internet connection. So large part of the rural networks are also not connected by a mobile broadband. This picture I borrowed from the news agency. And you can see in this picture is Sri Lanka, where school children with a teacher walk long distances. And to go very high up you can see they sit in a tree where they had to make shift sort of place where they are sitting where they now can connect to the internet. So it is not always the solution to go high tech because of the challenges. Again, it has implications for the safety as they walk there as they sit there. There are so many things. One of the things that I have here is the time of broadcasting. In our work we travel a lot to visit our partners to monitor our work to have negotiations with governments and all our partners. And I remember sitting in one of the countries I will not mention the country, 5am in the morning at the airport waiting for a flight out. And what did I see on the television screen, a school lesson lessons were offered that time of the morning now. Another time I was in the hotel 2am same thing. So I was thinking for whom are they showing these lessons. So the time of broadcasting lessons should be consulted with the users of it. So I will skip some of the things that I have there because this is a very important one involve girls and make their voices heard. Because this brings me to the point that I said we should discuss it with them. When do you want to watch the TV? What is the convenient time? When making policies that affect girls it is important to hear their perspective. An example is the read mission policy for teenage girls. While it was introduced in Malawi in 1993 it failed to bring girls back to school because it did not address the challenges faced by teenage mothers. It was reviewed in 2016 with major involvement of women rights organizations. And that is why in our work in the next six years we will work extensively with women rights organizations to support our work. I've mentioned mentoring earlier but another level of mentoring is focused on developing leadership among school going and college and university girls. We started the Commonwealth wise women mentorship initiative and we are working with eminent women leaders, mentoring young women, mentoring school going and university going girls and to build their leadership so that they can become advocates for girls education. The picture here the image is of girls in Bangladesh which they call themselves the traveling troops who are going around the villages and speaking to communities and parents to propagate for education for girls. I'm nearly done. When Namibia gained its independence in 1990, they had a skewed education system and thousands of out of school youth as well as thousands more who dropped out to school for some or other reason. Conscious of the fact that youth is the future of any country. The education authorities were adamant that access should be broadened to educate the thousands of out of school and unemployed youth. So for school level the Namibian College of open learning was established and to date to date 742,001 students went through the system. I just got the data this morning. I have some affinity for this organization because I was the founding director 65.5% of the students are female and 34.5. This is the average over the past 25 years they turn 25 this year. I cannot imagine what would have happened to these youth if they didn't have this opportunity to go through open schooling. On the screen you see some of the publications that the Commonwealth of Learning has published. Again, Tony talked about right in the middle the one that the most recent one 12 years ago. On the very right hand side, I wrote in the concluding chapter which is called title the bright but challenging future of open schooling. And at that stage, that there is not enough evidence to advance the open schooling agenda into counter prejudices and misconceptions about open schooling reveal among key stakeholders and policymakers. Today, 12 years later, I can assure you that there is a plethora of documented evidence to counter any prejudice call his various resources to support the establishment of open schools, and to support them to provide quality education, including using open resources. In conclusion, last year we published this policy brief and these are some of the recommendations that we have made for policymakers, ensure gender analysis and sex disaggregated data and policy and program development. I think that is the most important one. If we want to look at transforming the system using a gender equality lens. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Francis. But you know why we've got this resource on the screen just to say that you know call has a lot of resources on its website. And they're all free. Please use them please reach out to Tony and to Francis if you need any further help or information. But I think what the main point which Francis has highlighted is, and this is related to how to get girls back to school is to reach the communities you know the communities can be a big barrier to sending the girls back to school. So if you have the religious leaders community leaders, and another person that can be very influential in bringing girls back to school is the empowered mother. You know, unless the mothers are empowered in the house to understand the value of the girls education. It will be very difficult to bring the girls back into education so I think empowering mothers will be a key to that. Another thing which Francis raised which was not raised earlier was this issue of cyber security and cyber safety. Another thing is going online. There's a lot of kind of harassment of girls and others on on happening online. How do we actually prepare both teachers and students to be aware of all these kinds of dangers lurking on the internet. And the other point which I think was very important was about appropriate technologies. You saw those children sitting in a kind of you know tree top thing trying to get connected in many countries people have used you know loudspeakers community radio and others to reach students where even basic phones basic mobile phones. So everything didn't have to be smart phone or smart device related, but people did come up with creative solutions and hats off to the teachers and parents and ministers who actually made these things happen. So with that now let me go back to the panel. Minister Honorable Priya Manik Chan there was a question for you from the chat, you know audience. Minister are you there. Well, while we made for the minister minister down. Dr. Please give your kind of perspective from the discussion so far. Thank you very much. Really interesting perspectives. When the comments about, you know, culture, and also the comments about about really making schools. A place for girls as well, you know, so that it's not just a place for boys and then you add girls. You know, you know, it made me tell it heads people donate. Donate it heads, you know, for for schools, and I made a comment that I've never received toilet paper. You know, for example, you know, or tissue paper, you know, how come something so fundamental to hygiene that you've forgotten all these years to budget for that. And we think something extra that people must donate to schools, you know. So, why isn't just obvious, and that the culture of schools the culture of all environments has to be the culture that's accommodating both boys and girls, you know, and looking at their special needs, and responding to that so I think that's for me it's very important. Also, somebody talked about multiple pathways or, or this talk about vocational training, for example, you know, I often make the point that my great great grandmother, by the time she was 14, I'm sure had had the education that facilitated imparted to participate in her community at that time. But here, you know, after 13 years of education, we 18 years come out and prepared to be accountable, productive, you know, participants, you know, in the, in the environment so we are doing something wrong, if we can actually house a child for 13 years. And she comes out, you know, hardly able to actually participate in what is some form of economy so therefore multiple pathways to the interest as early as possible, I think it's important someone talked about the possibility of being that online, you know, and an open manner so thank you very much. That's my comment. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Minister Manik Chen, are you there. I am very good to hear your voice again. Minister, there was a question from somebody saying that, can you say something about health and life matters among girls, especially mental health, what we can do about it. I didn't hear anything you said you broke up I think my internet giving me some trouble, or it could be yours. You know somebody on the chat asked a question that I'm sorry I missed your name that, can you say something about you know, health and life matters for girls, especially mental health. Right. Generally, and all the research in the world suggests to us very strongly that this is the time children need more counseling more than ever the difficulty areas of adolescents and the confusing changes happening in their bodies. Without a doubt we need a robust and a more robust application to girls than than boys, although I believe boys also need interventions and help with even more confusing issues arising that are more audible in the world. I don't want to say more presence, I believe you're always present but perhaps more audible on sexuality and how to identify and so on. I think it's even more important now I don't know that countries, and I could speak specifically from mine, we haven't proportionately addressed with resources, the needs that are arising, the mental health needs that are arising and so it has to be expanded into almost education, the way we treat education going to classroom and we teach for so many hours and we have X number of periods, X number of topics, subjects per week. It has to be went into a condition that we have we started and we held health and family life education hf le, where we try to teach these life skills. But it is my view that especially in this pandemic period, a more strategic, directed targeted intervention has to happen. And so we are working on a possible hotline we've also collaborated with the Ministry of Human Services where they have now a direct hotline that one can call for gender based violence. And this is one of the few countries that started a men's affairs Bureau because I saw someone saying it that we have to involve men in the conversation and for solutions on the issue of violence against women. And so when we had started that conversation somewhere around 2006 a very robust conversation. So you're not talking to us about what the problems, what you're talking about us, and we are perpetrators but you're not talking to us about what our issues may be and how we could resolve these together. So on the issue of mental health interventions, however we style it or call it because we should also accept that different countries have particular taboos against recognizing or accepting that their mental health issues and then they come in various forms and and in different present themselves differently and manifest differently amongst different populations and different cultures that we need to will make that almost a part of the curriculum. We have created for when we restart school to diagnostics and academic diagnostic to see where students are and where we need to start back from bought a wellness diagnostic for all our students from nursery, all the way through secondary to see how you feel about not having been in school how you feel about coming back, how frightened are you, how can we help you to settle in again. And we believe it's absolutely necessary to, as necessary as the academic work to get that straight, or everything else will be affected. Thank you. Thank you, honorable minister. Now I think we're running out of time and I don't see any questions over here. So, what I would do is I'll go around the panel with this question you know that what is your one takeaway from the discussion but what was the kind of insight that you've taken away from this discussion. And what is your one recommendation. So, from your perspective what you thought was one insight and one recommendation for the audience. I'll start with Tony then honorable unity down and honorable money chin and then Francis for a. So Tony. Prof. I think we probably would all agree that the traditional schooling system was based on an industrial model and an assumption that all learners are the same and must start in the same way they must end in the same way they must follow the same pathway. What I'm realising I think from this discussion is that every learner is unique. Every learner has slightly different challenges. And as I've said in the chat my sense is that especially for older learners, a blended approach could be a way of accommodating greater flexibility greater personalization. Thank you. Okay so your recommendation is blended approach. Great. Thank you very much my one takeaway, you know that many but one that comes to mind listen to everybody is that I think we all agree that we cannot warehouse children for 13 years open the doors when they are 18, you know, and expect them to be, you know, rounded individuals without constantly engaging the community constantly. Yeah, bring a bridge between schools and communities. That would be my one takeaway. Thank you. Thank you. Honorable Priya Manikchan. For me the opportunities that are presented with COVID was horrible and continues to be an awful awful thing. But with it came. Two things. One, a very strong demonstration, visible demonstration that we are resilient people, the world is, and human beings are, and two, that there are other ways we can teach and perhaps there will be more effective. I don't believe one or the other. I don't see us ever going back to one or the other. We will not do online alone. But I don't see us going back after this experience to just chalk and talk. Because like Tony says, it is very clear that we have opportunities here to treat with the diversity that we have and even one single classroom with so many different levels of learning and learning is in each child's life and I think it presents opportunities that we must not let go undocumented or unacted or we must implement post COVID. Thank you, Francis. Yes, there is so there are so many things to take away from here. But I think if we want to bring girls back to school, for me what I've heard I think the most impressive part that I would take away with me is the issue of spaces highlighted by Dr. Dao and the uniqueness of the girl and their experiences within those spaces and how to deal with it, but also to add to that and say but for us to address this, we need to have a discussion with them and not about them. So to make a recommendation, I definitely think open schooling in its various types of models that we have in the different context can definitely be a solution. It is not the solution but it can be part of the bigger picture. So I'm definitely for open schooling as part of the solution to bring girls back to school working with communities. Thank you, Professor Canberra. Thank you so much. I think this has been an excellent discussion, because we've nobody's really repeated the same things I mean everybody has complimented the whole issue so now we are much better aware and this discussion has really been very illuminating from all perspectives from different regions and so on. And the two things which came out really you know during the pandemic for education one was the issue of quality, and the other was the issue of equity. And what honorable Manik Chen said that you know, we have been fairly resilient, but there have been gaps. So if we are looking for the future of education we need to build resilient education systems that can withstand all future disasters. I mean they will not withstand all future disasters, those disasters have a way of getting the better of us. But they would be more resilient going forward so I think many things will have changed as we move on equity becomes absolutely critical because even now you know the global education meeting which UNESCO held you know last week. And they had done a survey on what countries are doing to reach the vulnerable groups, and you'll be surprised that only 9% of the countries reported taking one or more measures to support the education of the least vulnerable, which includes girls. I think we need to do more in this area, it's not even now we haven't really taken care of this issue. But in conclusion I mean let me quickly summarize the three policy implications from this discussion. The first one is that conventional brick and mortar approaches will not bring more girls to school. And the second one is that conventional brick and mortar approaches will bring more students and technology based approaches which are more flexible, which will allow them to study at their own convenience at a fraction of the cost. And this is not going to be either or it's going to be blended approaches. And this is not going to be blended approaches to provide the remedial classes to bring you know to take care of the learning loss so that's the first. The second is that political will is very necessary, because we are doing we are talking about you know bicycles in this country midday meals in another country, but these remain pilots, unless we have the political will to scale and sustain them. We've got two political heavy weights here with us. So how can we complete the circle from policy to implementation to measuring impact. And I think this has also come out in this presentation is very important to get the data. And the final point is that we need to focus on building social capital empowered mothers and sensitized communities can be the most powerful stakeholders for ensuring that girls not only have access, but every opportunity for success. So what innovative ways of community engagement can help us some mount the barriers that we have faced in these lockdowns and through tradition and through culture so called. So I think those were the three points which I wanted to highlight. And since we've run out of time, I want to thank you all our panelists honorable Dr unity now honorable Priya Manik Chen, my colleague Stoney maze and Francis for era and the visible audience we've had and of course Adriana, who has been really the main stay in organizing all that. Thank you, Adriana just show your face for a minute. There she is. Thank you, Professor. Thank you, thanks Adriana so. Thank you so much.