The study sought to understand and explain why girls perform worse than boys in schools, with large variations between districts, between schools, and between subjects in order to provide insights and policy recommendations for tackling the barriers to girls’ education that persist.

It was guided by a multidisciplinary approach that took into account the insights from a literature search. Five sources of data were used in this study: school level data from the Rwanda National Examination Council (RNEC), data from the Enquête Intégrale sur les Conditions de Vie des ménages (EICV2) survey collected in 2005/06, focus groups and interviews conducted in five districts and classroom observations.

In this report we will share the research findings as well as policy recommendations made.