The Challenges of Girl-Child Education in Government Secondary Schools of Abuja, Nigeria – Implication for Counselling

Abstract

Girl-child education is very important for the overall development of a country. In Nigeria, most especially in the northern part, girls’ enrollment into secondary schools is usually low compared to boys. Girls who enroll end up dropping out for various reasons like teenage pregnancy and early marriage, religious factors, socio-economic factors and school related factors. The focus of this paper is to investigate the challenges of our girls in Abuja, Nigeria viewing some government secondary schools of Abuja (FCT). The descriptive survey method was adopted for this study, using a clustered sampling method and simple random sampling procedure. Questionnaires were used for gathering information from the respondents who were teachers of four government secondary schools. 240 teachers responded to the administered questionnaire out of 960 teachers in the schools. Data was analyzed using percentages and bar charts. The enrollment rate of girls and boys in the four government secondary schools are almost the same. The drop out rate among girls is very minimal from the result. Poverty and poor academic performance are the highest barriers and obstacles to enrollment and also reasons for drop out of girls in the school. Teenage pregnancy and early marriage as a barrier is very low in this part of Abuja. It is recommended that counselors should identify indigent students, those classes with high enrollment and high dropout rate and help negotiate some form of incentives such as food, uniforms, books, scholarships and remedial classes for them. Also sensitization of the government, community, teachers and students on girl-child education.