Uganda's primary school enrolment has grown from roughly three million learners in the late 1990s to over nine million today, yet learning outcomes have lagged, with girls bearing a disproportionate share of this shortfall. Analysis of Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) results for 2020–2025 shows boys outperforming girls in higher divisions and in science, mathematics, and social studies, while girls' survival in school weakens as they approach the end of primary school. One overlooked driver is the absence of private, separate latrines for girls: without them, menstruating girls are often forced to stay home for several days each month, falling behind and, in many cases, dropping out before completing primary school. Evidence from a national latrine-construction programme in India found that toilet provision raised school participation, with the largest gains among pubescent-age girls where latrines were private and sex-separate; no comparable study has examined this question in Uganda, or tested its effect on exam performance rather than enrolment. This study addresses that gap using the 2025 Baseline Education Census, the first census of its kind, which records latrine stances separately for boys and girls across all 43,567 primary schools in Uganda, merged with 2025 PLE results at the pupil level. To address selection bias from non-random latrine placement, I propose a pupil-level regression with school fixed effects interacted with pupil sex, using boys within the same school as a built-in control group, and test for a dose-response relationship as girls' access to latrine stances increases. The study will generate Uganda's first national evidence on this question.
Project leader: Phionah Namuliira
Project researchers:
Scientific mentors: ALIDOU Sahawal
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