A/HRC/22/50 Government at the High-level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals pledged to invest in "infrastructure and labour-saving technologies, especially in rural areas, benefiting women and girls by reducing their burden of domestic activities, affording the opportunity for girls to attend school and women to engage in self-employment or participate in the labour market," as well as to remove "barriers and expanding support for girls‟ education through measures such as providing free primary education, a safe environment for schooling and financial assistance such as scholarships and cash transfer programmes".19 15. Improving access to education for girls requires that the incentives structures for families be changed, and that social and cultural norms that lead parents to interrupt the schooling of girls earlier than that of boys be challenged. Many poor households are unable to send girls to school because of the costs, both direct and indirect (school fees or other costs related to attending school, such as uniforms and books), of doing so; because of opportunity costs (girls who go to school are not available to work within the household); because of the commute involved, when the family lives at a far distance from the nearest school, and associated security concerns. The absence of separate sanitation facilities for girls in schools can also be a major obstacle. 16. Various programmes have proven to be effective in removing some of these obstacles. Bangladesh launched the Female Secondary School Assistance Project (FSSAP) in 1993; ten years later, as it entered its second phase, the project covered one quarter of rural Bangladesh and now benefits almost one million girls across the country in more than 6,000 schools.20 FSSAP provides a stipend to girls who agree to delay marriage until they complete secondary education, for a total cost to the programme of about US$121 per year per person; and it has improved sanitation facilities in schools. It has spectacularly succeeded in improving girls' school attendance rates. 17. Another successful example is the female school stipend programme introduced by the Government of Punjab, Pakistan, in 2004, as part of the broader Punjab Education Sector Reform Programme (PESRP), inaugurated in 2003. In targeted districts defined by their low literacy rate, the female school stipend programme provides girls a stipend (an amount slightly higher than the average cost of schooling), conditional on class attendance. An early study of the impacts of this stipend found a modest but statistically significant impact on girls' attendance of schools. 21 18. School-feeding programmes can also make a significant contribution to improving access to education for girls, with impacts ranging from 19 to 38 per cent in increased female school attendance, according to certain cross-country studies.22 The provision of take-home rations to pupils can be particularly effective in this respect, especially where markets are unreliable or prices of essential food commodities highly volatile, or where the capacity of the schools to provide meals is limited. In Pakistan, the provision of take-home rations to girls attending school for at least 20 days a month made overall enrolment grow 19 20 21 22 8 General assembly resolution 65/1, Keeping the promise: United to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, para. 72 (e). J. Ambler et al., “Strengthening Women‟s Assets and Status: Programs Improving Poor Women‟s Lives”, 2020 Focus Brief on the World‟s Poor and Hungry People (Washington, D.C., IFPRI, 2007). N. Chaudhury and D. Parajuli, "Conditional Cash Transfers and Female Schooling: The Impact of the Female School Stipend Program on Public School Enrollments in Punjab, Pakistan", World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4102 (December 2006). R. Khera, "Mid-day meals in primary schools: Achievements and challenges", Economic and political weekly, vol. 41, No. 46 (2006), pp. 4742–4750.