Schools in Kano State

Every school in Kano State belongs to exactly one managing board and appears once on one register. A primary school in a rural ward of Shanono, a Tsangaya centre behind Kofar Wambai, a fee-paying academy in Tarauni and a technical college in Wudil are all governed by the same law and inspected against the same standards, but each answers day to day to the board that holds its category. Kano State Ministry of Education sets policy, approves the budget, licenses schools and inspects; the boards run them.

Basic education — Primary 1 through JSS 3 — is free and compulsory in Kano State. No public basic school may charge tuition, a development levy, an examination charge or a uniform fee, and a parent who is asked for one is being asked for something the law does not permit. Senior secondary tuition is also free; what a senior secondary school may charge is a short, published list of ceilings, and nothing outside that list is lawful.

The register is refreshed every year by the Annual School Census, taken in the sixth week of the first term. The census is what fixes the enrolment, staffing and infrastructure figures quoted across this site, and it is the reason a category count here may differ by a few schools from a figure published a year ago.

Every school on the register carries a permanent code in the form KN/LGA/CAT/NNNN — for example KN/MUN/PRI/0184, which is the one hundred and eighty-fourth public primary school registered in Kano Municipal. The code never changes, even if the school is renamed, upgraded or moved to a new site, and it is the reference to quote in any correspondence with the Ministry or a board.

Where a school changes category — a junior secondary school upgraded to take senior secondary classes, for instance — it is issued a second code for the new category and keeps the old one for the classes it already runs. Where a school closes, the code is retired and is never reissued.