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9. Conditional Cash Transfer: this was designed to encourage rural poor households to
enrol and retain their children in schools. Beneficiaries are identified through local
school communities and SBMCs. The fund is also directed towards the provision of some
infrastructural development of rural community schools. The strategy has been part of
the DFID-GEP and has been adopted and expanded by the government.
10. Female Teacher Trainee Scholarship Scheme (FTTSS) provides a scholarship to rural
women to undertake teacher education training under an agreement that they would be
posted to rural areas to teach in schools and serve as role models to girls. The project
also began as part of the GEP project but the government and other NGOs have also
joined in some states to implement it (Dunne et al, 2014).
11. Second Chance Schools provide an opportunity for adults especially women that did
not have the opportunity to go to school or initially dropped out from schools to enrol
and acquire formal education.
12. Community Accountability and Transparency Initiative (CATI): According to UBEC
(2015), the CATI was initiated to ensure transparent implementation education
programme and running of educational institutions. It enables stakeholders’ to ask
questions and evaluate education programmes and institutions in their areas by
comparing the publicly released information on achievements of states with the realities
on the ground and contribute in ensuring improved service delivery and transparency.
However, the scheme was not sustained due to weak political will and funding (Oyefuga
& Adefeso-Olateju, 2017).
Another area of important strategy relates to curriculumdevelopment. As a result of widespread
criticism of the basic education curriculum that was considered to be both outdated and
overloaded and outdated, which also laid overemphasis on knowledge transmission instead of
skill acquisition, a revised basic education curriculum was launched in 2012 to take care of the
shortcomings (Humphreys and Crawfurd, 2014). Minimum teacher education standards were
also developed in line with the new basic education curriculum. While it appears too early to
evaluate the UBE curriculum, a major challenge is that the relevant teacher education
curriculum was only revised in 2012 and most of the existing teachers lack requisite training
and experience in the new curriculum (Unterhalter et al. 2017). Poor system of teaching has
been reported as a contributor in the non-enrolment, school dropout, truancy and poor
performance in public schools and tends to induce pupils’ movement from public to the private
schools in Nigeria (Hardman et al. 2008; Davison, 2010). Recent donor-funded initiatives are
contributing to stimulating some modification toward learner-centred and interactive teaching
approach but on the part of the teachers, there has been relatively low motivation and in-service
training. While more than half of primary school teachers (56.4) attended in-service training in
the past five years preceding a 2011 UBE survey, higher percentage of them (59.1%) surveyed
received between $27.78 $and 108.33 as their monthly salary (UBEC, 2013).
Other initiatives that seek to increase access to education for the poor, especially girls from the
poor households include abolition of school fees in in Jigawa State (Jigawa SMoE 2010);
provision of financial and material assistance, scholarships, uniforms and text books in many
states (Chege et al. 2008; Adediran 2010; Jigawa SMoE 2010; Dunne et al. 2013; ESSPIN 2013);
household mapping of school aged children, encouragement of households to enroll their
children in school, monitoring of students and pupils attendance by NGOs and communities in
Bauchi State (Chege et al. 2008; Coinco 2012); provision of alternative opportunities for pupils