‘There is no justification for excluding pregnant girls from the education system if they have not expressed a desire to leave school’, said a new directive issued by the Minister of National Education and New Citizenship in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a breakthrough for girls in the country.

Legally speaking, children already had a right to go to school, pregnant or not, according to the Constitution and the fact that the country is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. But cultural and moral resistance was stronger than any piece of paper: girls continued to be turned away from school if they showed signs of being pregnant. And those concerns are not going away if another piece of paper is added to the pile.

Cultural concerns

Over half of the population in the country is Catholic. It was the location for an Apostolic visit by pope Francis in 2023. Catholic schools in the country make up 25% of education institutions. These schools’ opposition to the new directive has been outlined in a statement, in which they asked that girls who are pregnant be ‘charitably moved to other schools‘ in order to maintain their ethics. ‘What would Jesus do?‘, some papers asked, tongue in cheek.

The opposition was further supported in a video provided by Donatien Nshole, general secretary of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo.  ‘One of the characteristics of our schools is discipline, in terms of morals’, he says.  ‘But if a girl falls pregnant in your school, isn’t it in some sense a fault of the church and its education?’ the interviewer asked. ‘By the same logic, that would mean that, if a child punches a teacher, they could not be expelled’, he replied.

Des élèves enceintes dans les écoles catholiques en #RDC🇨🇩: C’est inacceptable, c’est non négociable … l’Eglise catholique congolaise a le monopole dans la conduite des écoles sous sa gestion en vertu de l’accord entre Kinshasa et Vatican. Les précisions obtenues de Mgr Donatien… pic.twitter.com/6RSHWlMSCB

— Pascal Mulegwa (@pascal_mulegwa) July 17, 2025

The DRC is not alone in finding that a directive may not be sufficient to bring about change on this issue. Uganda introduced a policy to prevent pregnant girls’ exclusion from school in 2020, but that too seems to be faltering, with forced pregnancy tests in schools ongoing. In Tanzania, meanwhile, when the school ban was announced against pregnant girls, it seemed cursory, and no legal or policy reforms followed. At the end of last year, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Wellbeing of the Child repeated its calls for Tanzania to lift the ban. Its recommendations included calls for mandatory pregnancy testing in schools to be stopped.

Adolescent pregnancies happen. Far too much.

Globally, nearly a third of all women in developing countries start having children at the age of 19 or younger, which means that 21 million children are born to girls aged 15-19 years every year. If all those girls were in school and had to drop out , it would mean 57,000 girls being excluded each day.

Around two-thirds of the DRC population is under the age of 25 years of age. The country has also shockingly been described as ‘the rape capital of the world‘, with horrific stories of sexual violence linked to its past and ongoing armed conflicts.

This has implications for the place that education might have in society. In the country, there are 9 girls enrolled for every 10 boys, and this has been the case for a while. Ensuring that the new directive is correctly enforced will help close this gap.

The longer adolescent girls spend out of school, the more likely they are to never go back at all. This is because, once out of school, girls with young babies are at high risk of child marriage. In the DRC, at present, almost 1 in 10 girls are married by the age of 15 years.

Being excluded from school for pregnancy comes with stigma; it comes with financial worries linked to the lack of education; and, it is often accompanied by a lack of access to information and health support due to the discrimination and exclusion they face from their schools and communities. This stigma is reserved for the girls. The boys or men who are the fathers are not mentioned.

‘If this policy had existed before, I wouldn’t have lost so much time’, said Rita, who had to drop out of school aged 16, only to work out a way to return to school years later.

If those arguments do not suffice, remember that making schools more inclusive may actually bring down teenage pregnancies as well. Educated girls are more likely to use contraception as well.

With sexual violence so high in the country, inclusive education could help. It could encourage young girls and boys to learn to treat each other with respect and dignity from an early age and to understand how the decisions they make can affect them and others.

As we see with the stories from Uganda and Tanzania, passing a law is only the beginning. The real work lies in consistent enforcement and challenging the societal attitudes that stand in the way of progress. Excluding pregnant adolescents from school is not a solution; it is a social and economic stain that perpetuates a cycle of poverty, stigma and violence. Ultimately, allowing a pregnant girl to remain in the classroom is not just an act of mercy, it is a strategic investment in the future of the DRC.