challenges of girl child education
Overcoming Challenges of Girl-Child Education
By Kale Abba
Education has been variously described, including the analogy that likened education to the description of the elephant by the blind man. This means education can be seen from different perspectives. Nonetheless, education is what one experience from the cradle to the grave. That is what you learn and experience from birth to death.
Education is a fundamental right for girls and fulfilling this basic right is the only way to realize other rights of the girl child. In Nigeria, there is a sharp decline the standard of education, particularly in the northern part of the country and there is corresponding decrease in girls’ enrolment, retention, and completion of senior secondary school in the region.
A girl is a female child, a young unmarried woman, a single or married woman at any age. Education for the girl-child just as any other child is generally considered to be one of the core rights, as the basis for achieving other rights. Article 1 of the world declaration on the rights of the child to education which emanated from UN Conference in 1990 articulated that: “every person, child, youth, and adult shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet the basic learning needs”. Particular attention was paid in the Article 3 of the above declaration to women and girls geared towards removing every obstacle that hampers active participation. Discrimination was clearly removed as this opportunity must be enjoyed by poor, undeserved groups, street and working girls etc.
It is rather unfortunate that even in the 21st Century, the female Nigerian child, especially in the northern part of Nigeria, is denied equal access to education and several of them are exposed to harmful traditional practices like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), denial of education, child trafficking etc. statistical monitoring of education revealed that the national literacy rate of female is only 56% as compared to
By Kale Abba
Education has been variously described, including the analogy that likened education to the description of the elephant by the blind man. This means education can be seen from different perspectives. Nonetheless, education is what one experience from the cradle to the grave. That is what you learn and experience from birth to death.
Education is a fundamental right for girls and fulfilling this basic right is the only way to realize other rights of the girl child. In Nigeria, there is a sharp decline the standard of education, particularly in the northern part of the country and there is corresponding decrease in girls’ enrolment, retention, and completion of senior secondary school in the region.
A girl is a female child, a young unmarried woman, a single or married woman at any age. Education for the girl-child just as any other child is generally considered to be one of the core rights, as the basis for achieving other rights. Article 1 of the world declaration on the rights of the child to education which emanated from UN Conference in 1990 articulated that: “every person, child, youth, and adult shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet the basic learning needs”. Particular attention was paid in the Article 3 of the above declaration to women and girls geared towards removing every obstacle that hampers active participation. Discrimination was clearly removed as this opportunity must be enjoyed by poor, undeserved groups, street and working girls etc.
It is rather unfortunate that even in the 21st Century, the female Nigerian child, especially in the northern part of Nigeria, is denied equal access to education and several of them are exposed to harmful traditional practices like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), denial of education, child trafficking etc. statistical monitoring of education revealed that the national literacy rate of female is only 56% as compared to