Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Policy and Administration

Advisor

Timothy Fadgen

Abstract

Since 1990, Sierra Leone has experienced several major emergencies that required global attention: a decade-long rebel war, Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks. Each disproportionately affected schoolgirls’ educations. In 2021, the government of Sierra Leone introduced the Radical Inclusion Policy to support the education of girls and lift a policy that banned pregnant girls from attending mainstream schools to allow thousands of schoolgirls who were impregnated during the Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks to return to schools. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the education of adolescent schoolgirls in rural Sierra Leone, and the related public policy implications. The conceptual framework of this study was based on feminist theory, punctuated equilibrium theory, and Heidegger’s phenomenological theory. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with 16 participants from two schools. The data analysis was guided by Moustakas’s advanced series of methods. The results showed that many schoolgirls dropped out of school during the COVID-19 outbreak. Some schoolgirls returned to school due to the government introducing the Radical Inclusion Policy. The findings showed that many of the issues schoolgirls faced during the Ebola outbreak, such as long periods of school closures, girls dropping out of school, pregnancy of schoolgirls, and schoolgirls being mothers, reemerged and negatively impacted the education of schoolgirls. Findings may lead to positive social change by enabling the government of Sierra Leone to formulate and implement appropriate public policies to support the safety and education of adolescent schoolgirls.

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