Examining the impact of COVID-19 on girl child education: a case study of Pandwong Ward, Kitgum Town Council, Northern Uganda

Abstract

Globally, Covid-19 pandemic has threatened the education of students at all levels of study. In Uganda, documented and undocumented reports reveal that school going girls experienced multiple challenges due to the closure of schools for close to to two years from March 2020 to January 2022. The study employed quantitative approach of data collection using questionnaire. To properly understand these challenges, my study used simple random sampling to recruit 212 secondary School going girls from Pandwong Ward Kitgum Municipality. The major findings revealed that the closures of schools and other learning institutions have exposed young girls to multiple challenges such as sexual assults, sexual harassment, early pregnancies and school dropouts. The study concluded that Covid 19 has been a disaster on the education sector in Uganda. The closure of it's international borders was a necessary and important measure to control the disease, but it had the immediate effect of closing down most of the sectors. Consequently, it is realistic to say that education is the hardest hit sector in the Ugandan economy since students spend almost two years without physically appearing in school