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and out of schools children by Western education standard; they are treated separately

to capture specific peculiarities of the almajiri (see section 2.8).

Girl-child Education Programme (GEP):

GEP's programme include, inter alia, girls

‘education enrolment campaign, conditional cash transfer for poor households to enable

them to release their girls to attend schools, Female Teacher Trainee Scholarship

Scheme (FTTSS) that support teacher education of women in rural areas and raise role

models for girls education in rural areas. It particularly inspired many other

interventions, wider support and state commitment to girl’s education. The country’s

Gender in Basic Education Policy was produced as an outcome of GEP (FME, 2007).

Major components of the GEP are largely funded by DFID and implemented by the

UNICEF in five northern states (Bauch, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto and Zamfara states). The

DFID-funded ESSPIN also targeted promoted girls education in Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna,

Kwara, Enugu and Lagos states.

UBE Boy-child Programme

was designed to address diverse categories of out-of-school

boys, especially in the southeast and south-south where there has been historically low

male secondary school enrolment because boys tend to withdraw from school to engage

in different kinds of business activities. Information from the literature suggests that the

programme has not deeply taken roots like the GEP. It seeks to provide special

vocational education as part of the broader UBE programme.

Home-Grown School Feeding and Health Programme

provide at least one meal a day

for pupils in schools as a way of promoting school enrolment, retention and completion.

It has been implemented in 12 states (Bauchi, Cross River, Enugu, Imo, Kano, Kebbi,

Kogi, Nasarawa, Ogun, Osun, Rivers and Yobe) and the Federal Capital Territory but was

not sustained in all the pilot states. Some states like Kaduna have also taken up the

intervention with a great measure of success in pupils enrolment but it is not clear if

pupils are able to remain and complete their basic education (Ibrahim, 2017). Among

the almajirai, it produces mix results as pupils tend to leave school after the meals to beg

alms (Usman, 2008; Ezegwu et al. 2017).

School-Based Management Committee (SBMC):

In 2005, the National Council on

Education approved the establishment of School-based management committees

(SBMCs) in Nigeria primary and secondary schools. This step was influenced by the

implementation of the DFID-funded Girls Education Projects (GEP) and Education

Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN) as well as other gaps observed in the

community participation in education, funding and teaching quality concerns in schools

(Poulsen, 2009; Adediran and Bawa, 2009; Humphreys and Crawfurd, 2014). By design,

a unit of the SBMC supposed to include the head teacher, elected community

representatives, female and youth representatives as well as teacher and pupil

representatives. The committee’s function includes promotion community participation

in governance, contribution in school quality improvement and closing of the gap that

existed among relevant stakeholders in school management decision making and

evaluation such as the school authorities, the host community and the government.

However, the SBMC is not widely effective across the nation but has been successful in

places where they are functional, they have some relative success in raising funds for

their schools, serving as community voices in school governance and promoting quality

and accountability (Dunne et al. 2013; Humphreys and Crawfurd, 2014).