The Impact of Mentoring and Life Skills Training on Secondary School Progression Among Girls in India

Many developing countries are characterized by gender gaps in educational attainment that widen as cohorts progress through secondary school, leading to the failure of disproportionate number of girls to graduate. The objective of this pilot is to explore the impact of a girls' education program that provides life skills training and mentoring on girls' progression through secondary school as well as various measure of life skills. The project will be implemented by J-PAL South Asia and Room to Read in Rajasthan, India. Specifically, the pilot will collect data from around 200 girls in eight schools, four of which are currently served by Room to Read, and more limited administrative data from an additional 800 girls in eight schools. In additional extensive piloting will be done of innovative methods to measure life skills, and around 100 schools will be screen for their eligibility in a full-scale randomized controlled trial planned for 2016-2018.