PROGRAMME · SINCE 2016
Girl-Child Education Initiative
Conditional cash transfers, female teacher recruitment, separate sanitation and a back-to-school drive for girls who left at transition. ₦9,400,000,000 committed this year, reaching 318,000 girls.
Where the gap opens
Girls and boys start school in Kano in roughly comparable numbers. The gap opens later, and it opens at a predictable point: the move from Primary 6 into JSS 1, and again at the move from JSS 3 into SS 1. A girl who reaches JSS 1 is very likely to complete basic education; a girl who does not make that transition mostly does not come back. The programme is built around that fact, and its money is concentrated on the two transition years rather than spread evenly across the system.
The reasons girls fall out at transition are well documented and they are not mysterious. The nearest junior secondary school is further away than the primary school was. The household needs the labour or the marriage. There is no separate, private, working toilet at the receiving school. There is no female teacher there. And a family weighing a scarce naira between a son and a daughter has been making the same calculation for a long time.
The initiative addresses each of those directly rather than through exhortation: money to the household conditional on attendance, female teachers posted to girls' and mixed schools as a deployment priority, separate sanitation built and maintained, boarding where the distance is the binding constraint, and a return route for girls who have already left.
Where the indicator stands
0.90
Gender parity index
Girls per boy enrolled, all levels
318,000
Girls reached
Cash transfer, boarding or scholarship
₦9.4bn
Committed this year
Led by the Directorate of Basic Education
+596,000
More girls enrolled
Than in 2019/2020
Gender parity by level, current session
The parity index is girls divided by boys. A figure of 1.00 is parity; anything below it means fewer girls than boys at that level. The pattern is the whole argument for the programme: close to parity in the early years, and widening steadily with every step up the system.
| Level | Boys | Girls | Parity index | Girls as a share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-Primary | 214,000 | 198,000 | 0.93 | 48.1% |
| Primary | 986,000 | 874,000 | 0.89 | 47.0% |
| Junior Secondary | 312,000 | 268,000 | 0.86 | 46.2% |
| Senior Secondary | 186,000 | 154,000 | 0.83 | 45.3% |
| Technical | 26,400 | 12,000 | 0.45 | 31.3% |
| Non-Formal | 67,600 | 102,000 | 1.51 | 60.1% |
The conditional cash transfer
The transfer is the largest single component. A household with a girl enrolled in Primary 5, Primary 6, JSS 1 or JSS 3 — the years either side of the two transitions — receives a payment each term, on the condition that the girl has attended at least 80 per cent of the school days that term. Attendance is taken from the school register and verified against the school's termly return.
The payment goes to the mother or the female guardian where there is one, into an account at one of the accredited banks, or through a mobile wallet where there is no branch within reach. It is a modest amount by design — enough to offset the household cost of keeping a girl in school rather than to replace an income — and it is paid in the week after the school return is verified, not at the end of the year.
Where money is not the binding constraint but distance is, the household is offered a boarding place instead, with the boarding and feeding charge met in full for the session.
- Paid termly, to the mother or female guardian, against 80 per cent attendance.
- Targeted at Primary 5, Primary 6, JSS 1 and JSS 3 — the transition years.
- A funded boarding place offered instead where distance is the constraint.
- Paid into a bank account or a mobile wallet; no cash is handled at the school.
- No fee, no charge and no facilitation payment at any stage.
How a household joins
Enrolment in the transfer is done through the school, not by application to a board office. There is nothing to pay and no form to buy.
The girl must be enrolled and attending
Enrolment in a public primary or junior secondary school in one of the four target classes is the entry condition. If she is not currently in school, enrol her first — a place is guaranteed and costs nothing.
Ask the head teacher for the enrolment form
The school holds the forms and completes them with the parent. It records the girl, the class, the household, the mother or female guardian and the account or wallet number the transfer is to be paid into.
Verification by the local government education authority
The authority checks the enrolment against the school register and the household against the State social register. Verification takes about three weeks and the household is told the outcome through the school.
Attendance is recorded through the term
The class teacher records attendance daily. The threshold is 80 per cent of the school days in the term, and absence for illness with a note from a clinic does not count against it.
Payment in the week after the school return
The school files its termly return, the authority verifies it and the transfer is paid. Where a payment does not arrive, raise it with the head teacher, who has the payment schedule for the school.
Re-enrol each session
Eligibility is checked each session, since the target classes move. A girl who leaves a target class remains covered by the wider programme — female teachers, sanitation, scholarships — but the transfer follows the class.
What else the programme delivers
The transfer is the visible part. The rest of the money goes into the conditions that make a school a place a family will send a daughter to.
- Female teachers posted to girls' and mixed schools as a deployment priority, and scholarships for women training as teachers.
- Separate, lockable, working sanitation for girls, with water, in every school in the programme.
- Menstrual health provision and a private space, so that a week a month is not lost.
- Funded boarding places where the nearest junior secondary school is too far to walk.
- A back-to-school drive that traces girls who left at transition and offers a place, materials and, where needed, an accelerated class.
- Scholarships and bursaries for girls continuing into senior secondary, science and technical schools.
- Community engagement with ward heads, mothers' associations and religious leaders, in Hausa.
Questions asked about the initiative
Who receives the money?
How much is it?
What happens if my daughter is ill and misses school?
Does the programme cover girls in private schools?
My daughter left school two years ago. Can she return?
Is anyone allowed to charge me to be enrolled in the transfer?
How is the programme measured?
Who funds it?
What has changed since 2016
Girls' enrolment across the State has risen from 1,012,000 in 2019/2020 to 1,608,000 in 2025/2026 — an increase of 596,000. The gender parity index has moved to 0.90 and the transition rate into senior secondary now stands at 82.4 per cent for the cohort as a whole.
Parity has not been reached. The gap is widest in senior secondary and in the technical stream, where girls are still fewer than a third of enrolment, and closing it is where the programme is now directing its growth.
Enrol a girl, or bring one back
A place in a public basic school is guaranteed, free, and available at any point in the session.