By; JACOB ONJEWU DICKSON
Sociocultural, security, economic, infrastructure and access barriers have been Identified as inhibiting factors to girl child education in Kaduna State.
A resource person, Philip Daniel highlighted this when presenting a paper, titled, “Barriers/bottlenecks of girl education at a 2-day Media Strategic Session On Deepening Conversation Barriers To Girl Education has commenced in Zaria on Tuesday.
According to him, the sociocultural barriers to girl child education include forced into marriage prematurely, which likely leads to dropping out of school.
He also listed lack of confidence on children with disability, parents level of exposure, household chores and child pregnancy as other sociocultural factors affecting girl child education in the state.
On the negative role that security barrier creates on girl child education, he explained that the persistent security challenge in the Kaduna State especially kidnapping, remains a potential threat to education, especially for girls.
“No parameter fences in rural and semi-urbanschools makes learning difficult for girls,” he added.
According to Daniel, ecconomic barriers like poverty, child labour, impact of COVID-19, poor skills development for girls and .street hawking are also some Identified factors limiting education of girl child.
On infrastructure and WASH barriers, he lamented that insufficient toilet facilities, lack of sanitary pads supply for girls during menstruation and Infrastructure most schools are not disability friendly, are also discouraging girls from going to school.
Similarly, he said that lack of potable drinking water in some schools, lack of safe spaces and weak guidance and counseling units in some schools have also contributed to girls dropping out of schools.
“Increase in enrolment has not been matched by a proportional increase in the number of classes/facilities,” he added.
While explaining how access barriers limits girl child education, he mentioned school related gender based violence, weak Involvement of beneficiaries and School Learning Accountability Mechanism (SLAM) 1 and average walking distance to school as other frustrating issues.
“Change of location or relocation of parents, paucity of teachers and weak implementattion of policy budget and budgets,” he said, also fall into the access barriers category.
