A new ratings system will assess schooling for girls worldwide

An advocacy group set up by Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai and Foreign Policy Magazine are launching an annual index to assess the availability and quality of education for girls around the world, organizers said.

The index will compile data to highlight gaps in secondary educational opportunities as well as gaps in donor funding, the magazine said in a statement.

“This new index is a ‘report card’ for our leaders, a critical step toward helping ensure that my sisters everywhere can have a quality, safe and free secondary education,” said the 18-year-old Yousafzai in the statement.

Yousafzai was shot in the head in Pakistan in 2012 by the Taliban for advocating girls’ rights to education.

Some 62 million girls are out of school around the world, and girls have faced violence for trying to go to school in 70 nations, according to the Malala Fund, which Yousafzai founded with her father to support education for girls.

The yearly index will show the availability, quality and security of girls’ secondary education, using data from non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, national governments and other groups, the Washington, D.C.-based magazine said. It did not say when the first index would be published.

The education activist is the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, which she won in 2014. She is the topic of a documentary movie “He Named Me Malala,” to be released in October.

This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Ellen Wulfhorst is the Chief Correspondent of the Americas for the Thompson Reuters Foundation.

Image: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai poses with the medal and the diploma during the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony at the City Hall in Oslo December 10, 2014. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett