The right to education doesn’t end at primary school

Education is a human right. Not a privilege, and not a reward for good behaviour. It is something that every child is entitled to, alongside the right to safety and dignity. In practice, the three are inseparable. Take away a child’s access to school, and their safety and dignity are rarely far behind.

For many girls in rural Kenya and Tanzania, that right quietly runs out the day primary school ends.

For over a decade, So They Can’s work in Kenya and Tanzania has been built around partnerships with government primary schools – 55 of them, reaching 56,000 children – and that work continues to matter enormously. However, increasingly, it’s clear that girls need just as much support once they reach secondary age.

In 2026, we began an important next step: partnering with 14 secondary schools across Baringo in Kenya and Babati in Tanzania.

The reason is in the numbers, and they’re stark. In the communities that So They Can partners with, only 52 per cent of secondary-aged children in Kenya, and 44 per cent in Tanzania’s Manyara region, are enrolled in secondary school at all. When a family can no longer justify the fees, the uniform, or the lost help around the house, the first response is often the same, regardless of whether the child is a son or a daughter: pull them out of school and put them to work.

But for girls, there’s a second, increasingly more dangerous layer on top of that – being “ready” for female genital cutting and early marriage.

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The connection between the two is hard to argue with. In Kenya, girls with no schooling are married before 18 at a rate of 46 per cent. For girls who complete primary only, it’s 34 per cent. For girls who make it into secondary school, it drops to just 6 per cent. That’s not a small difference – it’s close to six-fold. It says something simple – keeping a girl in secondary school is one of the most powerful protections against child marriage and female genital cutting that exists.

Both Kenya and Tanzania have laws setting 18 as the minimum age of marriage, and both have outlawed cutting, but a law doesn’t change what happens in a rural community on its own; it takes buy-in and ownership from community members on the ground to make it real. In our local team’s experience, that looks like a safe secondary school with trained teachers, a genuinely inclusive environment for girls, and a community treated as a partner rather than a project.

That’s why our secondary school model isn’t only about school infrastructure like classrooms, dormitories, and toilet blocks – although the infrastructure gap is real. It also means training teachers, strengthening school governance, educating community members about child rights, and investing in projects like our Msomi Scholars scholarships, which just last year supported 44 Tanzanian students to stay in school.

A right doesn’t protect anyone by just existing on paper. It protects someone when a school, a teacher, and a community champion it throughout all aspects of daily life.

Safety, education, and dignity aren’t three separate causes. For the girls we work with, they rise and fall together.

Ellie Knight is the communications and marketing manager at So They Can.

Want to learn more about So They Can and our mission to end extreme child poverty through education? Join us at The Australian Law Forum on 30 July, as So They Can’s very own Boniface Mouti, Kenya country manager, and Samuel Munyonyo, one of the first students So They Can has supported throughout their education journey, will be taking to the stage to discuss the importance of education for every child, everywhere.

Keen to discover ways you and your firm can get involved in championing children’s rights to education beyond primary school? Reach out to Emily, So They Can’s partnerships manager: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.