Next steps in advocacy and stakeholder engagement to ensure girls in Kaduna State, Nigeria benefit from free secondary education

• In Event: Minding the gaps: with more sub-Saharan African governments introducing free secondary school education, what barriers persist for marginalized girls?

Proposal

As the co-director of Centre for Girls’ Education (CGE) in Kaduna State in northern Nigeria, Habiba Mohammed works to keep girls in school and provide alternatives to early marriage in rural communities. In 2017, Malala Fund selected Habiba as a Gulmakai Champion. High fees and low-quality education prevent girls in northern Nigeria from going to school and reaching their full potential, so Habiba campaigns for the Kaduna State local government to eliminate school costs and ensure higher learning standards.

In September 2018 the Kaduna State government declared that secondary education would be made free for girls. The challenge following this decision to eliminate school fees for girls is to continue to advocate for implementation, and for quality and safety in schools.

CGE’s approach to advocacy around getting and maintaining free secondary education for girls involves working with girls themselves to be able to speak to education stakeholders at all levels, from communities to local government education authorities to zonal education authorities to the state Ministry of Education. Each decision maker needs to understand and accept the issues undermining girls education and lend their support to stand for the rights of the girls to free education.

Following the decision to make secondary education free for girls, Habiba continues her work supporting girl advocates to meet with stakeholders to advocate for more support for girls education to ensure it is truly to free, safe and quality for everyone. Parents of girls need to understand how they can support their girls going to school with reductions of chores at home. Communities need to support the Parents and Teachers Associations and School Based Management Committees to ensure smooth running of school activities. Teachers need to be trained and/or retrained to understand their context as teachers and role models to girls. School administrators need to understand their role in bringing up the girl child in the Nigerian education context. And to ensure implementation of free education by stakeholders, nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations need to work together to track schools for accountability and transparency.

To address other barriers that free school does not address and other unintended consequences of making secondary education free for girls, Habiba advocates for government to rise to the responsibility of providing essential teaching and learning materials in schools to guarantee quality education, and for them to work with community and religious leaders and security personnel to provide safety for girls in schools. There is also a need for the government to provide more structures in schools to help cope with the issue of overpopulation in classes.

In this session Habiba will share the progress make working with girls and various stakeholders to advocate for implementation of free secondary education for girls, address the other barriers girls face beyond school fees, and identify unintended consequences that have arisen since the decision was made.

Author

• Habiba Mohammed, Centre for Girls’ Education