The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it is targeting the enrolment of at least one million girls in schools through its School-Based Management Committee (SBMC).
This was disclosed on Tuesday, by UNICEF’s project coordinator in Kano State, Richard Akanet.
Mr Akanet said the SBMC targets improvement in school enrolment, especially for girls, as well as a remarkable decrease in schoolgirls’ dropout.
He also said so far, improvement has been recorded in the UKAID sponsored eight-year programme, which has also succeeded in training 15,300 head teachers in school effectiveness and efficiency.
In addition to this, 1.6 million girls expected to acquire skills for life self-sufficiency while 42,000 primary and Integrated Quranic Schools (IQS) teachers have been trained.
According the presentation, the benefiting states include Kano, Sokoto, Niger, Zamfara, Katsina, and Bauchi.
Mr Akanet also said the programme, which is expected to end in 2020, has been of benefit to not less than 1.9 million boys through the improvement of teacher quality and school governance.
“From research and investigation, reasons given so far for the non-enrolment into schools in the north include, but not limited to distance of school, which was pegged at 44 per cent as well as opportunity cost and direct cost which are 36 per cent and 26 per cent respectively.
“Socio-economic status has been the main reason behind not being enrolled in school. Since May 2012, UNICEF has been implementing the eight year GEP3 (2012-2020).
“The main reasons given for girls’ dropout are direct cost, which is 29 per cent, no interest; which is 25 per cent and opportunity cost, which is 23 per cent,” he said.