Description
Increasing numbers of countries have established national policies enabling pregnant students to either stay in school during their pregnancy (continuation) or return to school after they give birth (reentry). As of 2008, five countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, and Swaziland) have reentry policies, while Cameroon and Madagascar have continuation policies. Latin American countries including Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Colombia have passed laws supporting the rights of pregnant girls to receive education.
Such policies can also be implemented at an institutional level. For example, the UNICEF-funded Diphalana Initiative established a pilot program at the Pekenene School in Botswana. Prior to the initiative’s development, only some girls were allowed to return to school when they became pregnant, and those who were allowed to do so were required to wait one year post-delivery. The initiative worked with the school to allow student-mothers to return when they receive a doctor’s consent and continue for as long as they choose.
Implementation lessons learned
Program planners should anticipate possible resistance in their intervention designs and engage the community to create buy-in. Although teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward the Diphalana Initiative (and this practice) changed over time to be generally positive, parents— especially men—and other community members expressed strong feelings against it. An evaluation suggests that this resistance may have derived from a sense on the part of some community members that the initiative did not benefit the general community but only one school. While the government expected the community to sustain the initiative, community members viewed the initiative as a UNICEF activity and did not offer buy-in. The Diphalana experience strongly suggests the need for an assessment of community caregiving norms early in the process of designing interventions; involvement of men and women in the design of initiatives; and careful monitoring of program implementation and effects.
Advocacy and awareness-raising should also accompany national-level continuation policies to combat potential implementation challenges such as lack of awareness, lack of compliance, and stigma.
Example
Study on Namibia pregnant learner policy (Hubbard, 2008)
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