Free education in Kenya isn't entirely free. Tuition is free, but as in other places, there are many other costs associated with school that aren't covered. These include books, school uniforms, bus fares, and food and accommodation costs for those students who live far away from their schools and need to board there.

Kenyan girls participate in the girls' soccer program called Moving the Goalposts. Photo courtesy of Moving the Goalposts.

Time and time again, teachers and local development workers in the coastal district of Kilifi told me that when parents have to choose whether to pay for a son's school-related costs or a daughter's, it's usually the daughter who misses out. They said one of the main reasons behind choosing a son over a daughter is that daughters usually have to drop out of school early anyway, after they get pregnant or married. And their experience is that many do.

Most of the girls I interviewed had sisters or friends who dropped out of school, either because they got pregnant or married as early as age 13. Few girls then returned to school, since they were too busy with childcare and other domestic duties, or too ashamed of getting pregnant before marriage.

One young woman I spoke to, who has now become a peer health educator herself, has two sisters who fell pregnant while still in school, one at age 15, the other at age 12. The 12-year-old revealed that she was sexually active by age eight and by the time she fell pregnant, she had already had three sexual partners.

Pretty shocking. I could see how it's helpful for teenagers to learn about sexual health and become aware of ways to resist peer pressure, but it's hard to see how an eight-year-old girl should ever have the responsibility of resisting sexual advances -- especially when, I'm told, it is almost always much older boys or even married men who are putting pressure on girls as young as this to have sex, sometimes in exchange for money.

That's where it becomes important for communities to step in, to protect girls from exploitation. But poverty often conspires to blur the line between exploitation and survival. Sometimes it's the parents who pressure girls to marry young, since a bride's parents receive money or livestock from the groom or his family. Seventy-five per cent of people in Kilifi live below the poverty line.

Moving the Goalposts, the soccer and development charity featured in my report, uses a very unconventional way of tackling issues of discrimination against girls. By training girls to excel in football -- traditionally a male sport -- and to develop leadership skills, it strives to change the way rural communities in Kilifi think about girls and value them.

The charity's community outreach programme is helping parents to see education for both boys and girls as a route out of poverty, since it opens up opportunities for jobs and better income, which usually benefits whole families.

Listen to Emily's story on the work of Moving the Goalposts in Kenya.