'UK falling short on aid ambition to educate world's poorest girls'

Britain has fallen short in its ambitions to educate the poorest and most vulnerable girls around the world, the aid watchdog has found.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) said despite a commitment to helping girls, too many aid programmes lost their focus and in some cases abandoned targets for helping girls altogether.

In one project in Pakistan, in which out-of-school children were to be given vouchers allowing them to enrol in private schools, the vouchers were given to a relatively low proportion of girls compared with boys.

Only 43% of the vouchers were given to girls, the Department for International Development (DFID) said, despite them making up a higher proportion of children missing out on schooling.

The report also found that the focus on girls was lost to competing priorities and that female-focused interventions were sometimes poorly designed.

There was also a lack of expertise among organisations tasked with delivering education to marginalised girls and difficulties with "challenging environments".

ICAI's commissioner Tina Fahm, who led the review, said: "The UK Government has made a strong commitment to tackling this huge problem, but has struggled to maintain the focus on girls and on results for marginalised girls in particular.

"Weaknesses in performance means that girls, and especially hard-to-reach girls, are less likely to get the education which they so desperately need to improve their life chances.

"We welcome DFID's significant investment in girls education but DFID now needs to improve its focus and performance to make a difference to as many lives as possible."

The report rated DFID's performance as "amber-red" meaning it requires "significant improvement to ensure a clear, strategic direction, and to tackle a pattern of under-performance".

A DFID spokeswoman said: "British people can be proud of how UK aid is helping unlock the potential of these girls by helping lift them and their families out of poverty. At the same time we are determined to deliver value for every pound of taxpayers' money we invest.

"The results of our work are clear. In conflict-torn South Sudan, we've helped 170,000 girls get an education. In Afghanistan we've given over 300,000 girls access to school. In Kenya our work has given disabled girls the chance to attend mainstream schools for the first time.

"Our commitment to improving the lives of girls across the world is rightly commended by ICAI."