Structural Adjustment and Gender Access to Education in Nigeria

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article reports on relative gender access to secondary (grammar) school education from 1977 to 1990 in Imo State, Nigeria. To this end, time series data on secondary (grammar) school enrolment in Imo State from 1977/78 to 1989/90 were analysed. The findings are: (i) the existence of a gender imbalance in access to grammar school education in which the participation rate for girls was less than 40% up to 1980/81. This is discussed with reference to the prevalence of a gender-biased tradition which restricts girls' access to education; (ii) the dramatic overturning of the gender enrolment imbalance, in favour of girls, from 1981/82 when girls' participation rate in secondary education reached a peak of 56%. This is attributed to the nationwide implementation of a 6-year programme of free and compulsory Universal Primary Education (UPE) in Nigeria from 1976. The free and compulsory UPE scheme (which removed the traditional constraints on female education)had the immediateeffect of causing a phenomenal growth in primary school enrolment that was paralleled in the secondary sector in 1981/82; and (iii) the decline in access to grammar school education, more marked for girls than for boys, since 1986 when free market reform structural adjustment policies (SAP) prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were introduced in Nigeria. The SAP was accompanied by enormous financial and economic hardship which militate against access to education for the majority of poor Nigerians and for girls in particular. These findings are consistent with reported findings elsewhere in 'adjusting' countries. It is concluded that the financial rigours of the structural adjustments that havebeen imposed on such countries militate against the United Nations Children's Fund and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation commitments to the elimination of all policies that hinder gender access to education in Africa and the global vision of education for all by the year 2000.