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MEDIA CENTER Transcript of Cynthia Lloyd’s Remarks at GEETA RAO GUPTA: So I'll stop there, and introduce our next speaker who is Cynthia Lloyd. Cynthia is Director of Social Science Research in the Policy Research Division of the Population Council, and she also serves in the National Research Council's Committee on Population; and as Chair of the National Research Council's Institute of Medicine's Panel on Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries. And she's going to share some of the results of that work. Importance of Secondary Education DR. LLOYD: Thank you. Well, thank you, Geeta, and thank you, Nancy. I want to compliment you and all of your colleagues on these really two excellent reports. And I don't want to repeat anything—I'll try not to repeat anything that's in them, but I want to share with you another effort which in a sense has been running in parallel with this effort, but somewhat in the shadows, because this has been a project, a panel that was commissioned about three and half years ago now—it's hard to believe by the National Academy of Sciences—to bring together a group of 15 experts that represent a variety of disciplines and also come from a variety of regions, to get together to review what we know about transitions to adulthood in all aspects. And so we have—this group of 15 experts has been working kind of on the sidelines and in parallel, but the good news is I think we're coming out in a very reinforcing and complementary way with our findings. The report was released in mid-December and will be published book, hopefully by the end of April. And the title of that book I think is very timely, Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries. And throughout that report special attention is given to schooling during adolescence, and to the importance for successful transitions in all domains of adulthood, education is providing that means to success. So to start with a little framework and background for the way we were thinking about these issues, and then I want to go on to supplement some of the points that Geeta has already made, to reinforce the value and the many benefits of schooling. First, just a reminder of some of the demographics we're dealing with. This year, in 2005, the U.N. estimates that there are roughly 1.5 billion young people ages 10–24 in developing countries who are currently making the transition to adulthood. And they represent 86 percent of all young people in the world. Seventy percent of these young people live in Asia, 42 percent in China and India alone. Nineteen percent live in sub-Saharan Africa, and 11 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. By 2015, these young people will be ages 20–34, and will have become young parents, citizens, and workers. And their personal futures and the futures of the communities, the countries, and, indeed, the globe where they live now rests on their ability to navigate this transition to adulthood successfully. The challenges for young people in making this transition are global— And in other parts of the world, in particular South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the size of these cohorts of young people will be continuing to grow into the future. So globalization and its power to reach across national boundaries and into the smallest communities carries with it the transformative power of new markets and new technologies. But at the same time, globalization is bringing new ideas and lifestyles that can conflict with traditional norms and values. And while the choices that young people make and probably more typically others, their parents and others make on their behalf, will facilitate their transition, and their—or constrain their success as adults. Their parents' past experience will provide little guidance to their children with respect to future employment prospects and the life experiences. So what does success require in today's rapidly changing world? The panel came up with several criteria for success, which we felt were set within the current context, that all young people will need good mental and physical health, including reproductive health and the knowledge and means to sustain health as adults. They will need an appropriate stock of human and social capital to become productive adults in their societies. They will need the acquisition of pro-social values, and the ability to contribute to their collective well-being. They'll need adequate preparation for the assumption of adult social roles and obligations as worker, parent, and spouse. They'll need the capability to make choices through a sense of self and personal confidence. So in the panel's view policies that support universal primary schooling of adequate quality, that support the expansion of good post-primary or secondary schooling, and that promote good health during this phase of the life cycle are essential in their own right, but also important because of their role in promoting success in many other domains. Learning occurs most intensively during childhood and adolescence, more intensely than during other phases of the life cycle, whether it be learning related to the development of physical and cognitive skills or the acquisition of knowledge and the shaping of values and beliefs. So policies and programs which affect the timing and sequencing of learning and the quality of the learning environment during these years can have important implications for the development of adult productive capacities. And in the panel's view the failure to invest at these early stages of the life cycle is extremely unlikely to be compensated for at any later phase of the life cycle. Now Geeta has already reviewed many of the findings from her report in the literature, and what I want to add now is some of our findings that will help to support and reinforce some of the benefits for girls and boys of being in school during the adolescent years. There has been much less known about the more immediate benefits of schooling during the formative adolescent years, when young people are developing norms and values about gender roles, are beginning to experience their sexuality, and are beginning to have the opportunity to participate as a citizen in their schools and in their communities. So the panel report was able to document some of these even more immediate benefits. First, as long as boys and girls remain students, the pattern of their daily lives appears to remain fairly similar, according to time use date collected in a variety of settings. It is when they reach puberty or when they leave school, whichever comes later, that their work roles and their daily lives become sharply differentiated. Both boys and girls tend to do domestic chores as long as they remain students. It's after they leave school that girls take up and become more specialized in domestic work and unpaid family work and when young men begin to enter the paid labor force. Thus, the longer boys and girls go to school together during the adolescent years, particularly secondary school, the greater the chance that the school can play a constructive role in developing norms and values among boys and girls that are supportive of gender equity. Behaviors that young people adopt as adolescents have critical implications for their future health and mortality. Indeed, in the panel's view unprotected sex is one of the riskiest behaviors that young people can undertake, particularly in settings in which HIV/AIDS is widespread. The panel found in its analysis of recent data for the demographic and health surveys that in a vast majority of countries women ages 15–17, who remain students, often enrolled in secondary school, are less likely to report having had sex than their unmarried age peers who are no longer enrolled. Furthermore, young people who are sexually active but remain in school are more likely to use contraception than sexually active young people who are no longer enrolled. So the steady growth over the last 20 years in the percentage of young people who remain in school during the late teenage years suggests that schools are becoming an increasingly important institutional environment for young people at a phase of the transition to adulthood when sexual activity becomes more prevalent. We need to learn more about what enhances the protective role of schools during these critical years of the life cycle in order to strengthen the capacity of schools to keep girls safe and healthy. At their best, schools have the capacity to enhance success in all transitions to adulthood, through the acquisition of skills and lifelong learning, the acquisition of pro-social values and citizenship, knowledge, and skills; decisionmaking, negotiating, and leadership skills; and the transmission of knowledge and means to sustain health. In particular in an era of democratization and the rise of civil society, training in citizenship skills is gaining ever greater importance, particularly in secondary schools, when young people are anticipating adulthood. However, schools can be a site for both learning and conflict, socialization, and exclusion. The language of instruction, the messages and values conveyed in textbooks, and the attitudes and behaviors of school principals and teachers in the school all have an impact on young people's sense of belonging, their integration with peers, and the type of civic identity they assume. Geeta has already mentioned the benefits of secondary school in terms of delaying marriage and childbearing, so I won't go into that. I will just make one point about the data that shows that secondary school investments for girls are good investment, even though the rates for both boys and girls are much lower than we would like. And most of the regions we see that girls, in fact, if they do get to secondary school are slightly more likely, with the exception of South Asia, to complete secondary school than boys. So it's a good investment from that point of view. So let me just end with a few of the panel's recommendations with respect to policies and programs. First, that policies and programs designed to enhance school quality or reduce dropout rates should be targeted to the poor, particularly poor young women who are often doubly disadvantaged. While the panel supports the U.N. development goals for education, it did not see the achievement of these goals—universal primary completion and the elimination of gender disparities—as sufficient for the next generation of young people to acquire the skills necessary for successful transitions to adulthood. The rapidity of global change, and changing patterns of employment require that policymakers give equal attention to investments in school quality in order to assure that students start on time and achieve adequate learning outcomes at the primary level so that we can create a stronger base for expansion at the secondary level. The panel's recommendations on gender equality emphasized the promotion of gender equitable treatment in the classroom through gender training for teachers and school administrators, as well as the development of compensatory educational opportunities for adolescent girls who missed the opportunity to enroll in school when they were younger children. Finally, given that schooling during adolescence may be one of the most effective strategies for supporting adolescent reproductive health, the panel recommends active collaboration between the health and education sectors in supporting programs to enhance adolescent reproductive health. Thank you. Question-and-answer Period MS. KLEIN: Hi. I'm Sue Klein [ph] from the Feminist Majority Foundation, the education equity director. And my question is primarily to Cream, but anyone else who wants to comment is you did bring up the important question or issue that in some countries, like the United States, girls are doing better than boys on many indicators of educational achievement, but you also were very strong in pointing out the role of education for changing us into a less sex stereotyped society. And I was wondering if you knew of strategies, policies, programs that are helpful for not only helping girls with that transformation, but also the boys. Thank you. MS. GUPTA: Thank you. Why don't we start with Cynthia, and then go down [inaudible]. DR. LLOYD: Yeah. I'll just—I'll respond to the point about the next generation entering the labor market and the changing rates of return to secondary and tertiary education. I think this has been mentioned earlier in the session that evidence from all parts of the developing world show very rapid rises in the rates of return to schooling, secondary and tertiary schooling, relative to primary schooling. I think the assumption in a lot of the interpretations of that makes the assumption that that is primarily due to globalization and the changing employment opportunities and the requirements, you know, in terms of schooling that are needed for those types of jobs. However, I think that there's another possibility, which is not such a nice possibility, which is that part of the reason for those shifts in relative rates of return could have to do with declining primary school quality. And so what you have is a very selective group of kids that are going on to secondary and tertiary education that are, you know, sort of self selected to be among the more talented sort of naturally. So I think that there is more research we need to do to understand better how those rates of return are shifting and why. And whether or not, therefore, that those that do go on to secondary and tertiary education are, indeed, getting the kinds of skills that they need for the changing job environment. Offsite Link
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