PCF10 Sub-theme: Promoting Equity and Inclusion // As part of Commonwealth of Learning’s (COL) strategic plan from 2021 to 2027, its open schooling portfolio focuses on children/youths in need of schooling opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. This category of children is referred to as Out-of-School-Children (OOSC), depicting children/youth excluded from education, which makes up about one-sixth of the global population of this age group. This study reports on COL's commissioned project in the African Commonwealth countries, with a special emphasis on girls to help it to better focus its efforts. The study was undertaken in two phases. Data analysis involved simple descriptive statistics and transcription of recorded interviews, the identification of themes and sub-themes and coding. Both findings were triangulated. Generally, the findings show common threads, for instance, gender inequality that pervades the data, with the female gender being at a disadvantage in most of the countries. Given the multi-layered challenge of OOSC, recommendations were made on school enrolments and persistence among primary and secondary school children, ICT-in-education, disabilities, the marginalised, teenage pregnancy, and climate change education. In collaboration with education experts, COL looks forward to developing interventions to address the matter of OOSC in member countries. // Paper ID 5400