Out-of-school children: How UNICEF’s Girls-4-Girls model boosts school enrolment in Katsina

When the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) introduced Girls-4-Girls (G4G) intervention in some five Northern States in 2017, the UN Agency had in mind the plight of a girl like Halimatu Yusuf, a 10-year-old girl, who is now in Primary 4 at Sada Primary School Kankia, Katsina State.

Halimatu Yusuf was a child-hawker until she was harvested from the street by a member of the Mothers’ Association of Sada Primary School, Kankia, and enrolled in the school. “I helped my mother to sell KuliKuli to augment her family income,” young Halimatu spoke through an interpreter and her Head Teacher, Mr Yusuf Hassan.

The young Yusuf used to be among the growing population of out-of-school children which is currently estimated to be over 10.5 million in Nigeria, who are unable to access safe and quality education with reports indicating that over 60 per of this figure are female.

Interestingly, Halimatu Yusuf, who is now in Primary 4 has become more or less the breadwinner of the family. She has now acquired vocational skills and she is into making of Vaseline, air freshener, soap, Izal and car wash, some of which are being sold within the school and around the community after school. She received vocational training from the G4G mentors in the school in addition to the basic school curriculum.

She said her ambition is to become a classroom teacher, adding that her parents appreciate the G4G programme because she is selling what she produces to help her parents and younger ones, while urging UNICEF to sustain the programme.

She said: “I was enrolled in school because of G4G and I learn how to make Vaseline (pomade), soap, Izal and car wash”. When asked what she wants to become in the future, Yusuf said, “I want to become a classroom teacher to other children.” According to her, she sells her products at school and around the community after school, and makes an average of N3, 000 per week which she said caters for feeding the family including her brothers and sister. She said  her parents were appreciative of her contribution to the family’s upkeep and assure her that they would continue to support her in order to complete her schooling and to further her studies.

Also speaking, the Head Master of Sada Primary School, Kankia, Yusuf Hassan, while highlighting the increase in girls’ enrollment in the school, said the institution which was established in 1953, currently has 1420 pupils comprising 789 girls and 678 boys.

He noted that with the introduction of G4G in the school, different methods were being used to boost enrolment of children, especially the girls, in order to ensure their retention, completion and transition. According to Hassan, the increase was partly due to the involvement of School Based Management Committee (SBMCs), Mothers Association, G4G mentors and town criers to sensitise members of the community on the need to send their children to school.

A member of the Mothers Association, Magajiya Usman, said they were actively engaged in house-to-house sensitisation of parents, using town criers to bring their children to school. Usman said they were also engaged in encouraging pupils to be in school and to complete their studies.

Both boys and girls have been trained to support the G4G programme.  One of the mentors at the school, Zulachatu Umar, said the programme had drastically reduced farming and hawking among girls during school hours.

The success story of G4G programme resonated in all the schools visited in Katsina State by the UNICEF team comprising two journalists, a cameraman and coordinating officials to evaluate the impact of the various intervention of the UN Agency in the state, especially as the G4G intervention comes to an end in December. Some of the schools visited include Hassan Usman Primary School, Sada Primary School, Kankia, DamboTukur Model Primary School, Ingawa LGEA, Ingawa Pilot Primary School, Jankuki Primary School, Jankuki, Pilot Science Primary School, Kankara and Nuhu Model Primary School, Kankara, among others.

UNICEF launched the G4G initiative in September 2017 as a component of the Girls’ Education Project Phase 3. The programme was initiated for target communities in Bauchi, Niger, Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara states, to help support girls to remain in school and improve their learning achievement. Under the project, which is supported by the Federal Government through the Advocacy and Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Federal Ministry of Information as well as the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) and UKAID, 90 per cent of the G4G schools are located in rural communities with 10 per cent in semi-urban centres in the target states.

A critical fact that emerged from the field visitations was that in some schools like Sada Primary School, Kankia, the number of girls enrolled in the school outweighed the number of boys. The school’s current population is 1,420 pupils comprising 789 girls and 678 boys. While some other schools had almost the same number, others have marginal increase enrollment of boys over girls.

It was also observed that in almost all the schools where the G4G programme was being implemented, members of School Based Management Committee (SBMC), Mothers Association and mentors, all worked in synergy to achieve the set goals of the project in the state. Members of the Mothers Association of each school, especially, apart from going from house to house on enrollment drive, also contribute money to buy uniforms, books, and other learning materials for the indigent pupils. The mentors selected among them teach the girls vocational skills such as tailoring, soap making, beads making, knitting, personal hygiene as well as how to protect themselves from advances of male counterpart who might want to rape them.

Quality of teaching and learning was also emphasised as the members of SBMCs closely monitor the academic activities in schools in addition to their numerous roles. Uniquely, too, is the introduction of Reading and Numeracy Activity (RANA), which has Hausa version HASKE in some of the schools supported by UNICEF to boost learning achievements of the pupils.

UNICEF’s Focal person at Isa Kaita College of Education, Dutsima, Katsina State, Mrs Hauwa Abdulmumin, said RANA was implemented initially in six local governments areas but now extended to the entire local government across the states. He said  the idea was to use an activity based plan to teach the pupils how to read and write in Hausa in line with the national policy on education which states that lower basic education should be taught in the language of the immediate environment.

According to her, teachers from Primary 1-3 were selected from the Global Partnership for Education (GEP), intervention local governments, to train them on the implementation of the teaching methodology in the schools where UNICEF is intervening.

She said:  “But in our six intervention local governments, I have trained over 1,000 primary 1-3 teachers on RANA methodologies and intervened in over 1,000 Qur’anic schools, at least 200 local Qur’anic schools in each of the 12 local government areas.

“In fact, the impact is better seen than imagined; now an average primary one pupil whose his teacher has gone through RANA training would be able to read better than a primary 6 pupil in another school that has not had RANA intervention. And they are being able to read in Hausa, which is the indigenous language in Katsina State.

“The plan for GEP3 was to bring back one million girls in school and just recently, when we returned from Jigawa on Saturday, about 960,000 to 970,000 girls are back in school now. So, we have met the target as far as GEP3 is concerned,” she said.

Also speaking, UNICEF Gender Desk Officer at Katsina SUBEB, Hauwa Kaikai, explained that in Katsina State G4G was being implemented in nine GEP3 local government areas with 292 schools and more than 10,000 girls who have received series of training on leadership and life skills both at the cluster, state and national level. It is also important to note that each of the schools has as many as 25 or 20 pupils per group, and each school has three groups and are taken care of by a mentor each.

Speaking on sustainability of the programme after UNICEF would have exited, Kaikai said the programme would actually terminate in December because it is under the GEP3 initiative and GEP3 is ending in December. She said one of things UNICEF had done bearing this in mind, was the recent training of education managers which include the local government education secretaries, commissioner of education, State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) officials and social mobilisation officers at the local government, to include the G4G leadership and life skills in school curriculum so that when G4G finally leaves, the schools would adopt the process and proceed with it.

Kaikai further explained that in implementing the programme, 25 women were selected from each catchment area of these 292 G4G schools to for Mothers Association and were trained on the roles and responsibilities as mothers and mentors to increase enrollment and sensitise the parents and the community to bring back out-of-school children.

“As at today, we have trained 3,700 members of Mothers Association in 292 schools in 9 LGAs,” she said.

Director Planning Research and Statistics at SUBEB and UNICEF focal person, Zainab Kaita, who spoke on the impact of the home-based virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, said UNICEF in collaboration with SUBEB and five media houses, commenced statewide virtual learning in June and sustained it for several months.

Kaita said the programme, which was targeted at primary 1-3 pupils improved the reading culture among them and bridged the academic gap brought by the closure of schools. She estimated over 3,449 pupils participated in the virtual training programme which was transmitted through the radio.

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