Totally out-numbered by their male colleagues, female teachers are fast becoming game-changers in wooing girls from the ‘streets’ to the classroom , FELIX KHANOBA writes.
Every school day at Model Primary School, Achida, Wurno Local Government of Sokoto State, Mercy Jumai Kuram, plays her usual role of a class teacher, but her motherly mien is getting more attention from females not only in the school but in the community.
“Aunty, I want to ease myself.., it is time for us to eat,…. ” some of the female pupils yelled as they clustered round Kuram, who happens to be one of the only two female teachers in the school.
“Some of them are often shy to express themselves to male teachers because of cultural orientation, but you can see how excited they are, coming around me.
“Even, some girls that are not yet pupils in this school, you will see them coming around me during the break, especially when it is feeding time, ” Kuram said during a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Nigeria facilitated visit to the school to access on the spot impact of its Girls Education Project phase 3 (GEP3).
The female teacher, who said she has participated in a number of GEP3 training programmes, revealed that knowledge garnered from such exercises has given her a major leverage in classroom activities, especially in attending to female pupils.
“The numeracy programme makes work easier for me and I can now teach with teaching aides very well because many of them (pupils) don’t understand English.
” Before now, we didn’t have many girls in this school, but this time through the help of this numeracy programme we have been able to attract more girls,” Kuram said, adding that her other female colleague also has almost similar experience.
“The pupils really like female teachers,” she said.
While making a case for more female teachers in the school, Kuram said some parents in Achida are now more confident in enrolling their girls in the school as many see them (female teachers) as role models.
She, however, called for the provision of more facilities and sustenance of the school feeding programme in order to attract more children to the school, even as it was observed that some of the pupils were seated on bare floor.
Head teacher of the school, Hassan Achida, who also expressed delight on the massive increase in girl-child enrolment in the school as a result of the UNICEF GEP3 interventions, said the school which could hardly boast of 200 female pupils now has 795 girls.
“We now have 924 boys and 795 girls. In class like primary four, the males and females share the same number- 113 each,” he said, adding that the school has 19 teachers out of which only two are females.
Aliyu Achida, GEP3 desk officer, Wurno local government, said the UNICEF intervention has become a game changer especially in addressing the problem of out-of-school children as well as shoring up girl-child enrolment.
The UNICEF GEP3, funded by Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom , was initiated 10 years ago to address issues of girl child enrolment in six states in northern Nigeria.
The states are: Zamfara, Sokoto, Niger, Bauchi, Katsina, and Kano states.
Maryam Darwesh- Said, UNICEF chief field officer in Sokoto , who also threw more light on the massive gains recorded by the GEP3 during a three – day media dialogue on girl’s education, which took place in Sokoto, urged state governments to take ownership of the programmes that have become education magnet for the girl child.
Narrating some of the massive gains recorded under the project, Darwesh-Said said in Sokoto and Zamfara states alone, the GEP3
attracted 964,325 children to school from 2012 till date.
She said that the figure represented 44 per cent in Sokoto and 62 per cent in Zamfara, based on progressive annual school census data.
According to her, the capacities of no fewer than 11,593 teachers were also enhanced, out of whom 486 were females in the two states, adding that 1,280 Integrated Qur’anic School (IQS) facilitators were also trained in the two states.
Darwesh-Said said that the project ensured three outputs comprising increased enrolment and retention of girls in basic education, improved capacity of teachers to deliver effective learning for girls and improved governance to strengthen girls’ education.
”I would like to use this opportunity to call on the states, to ensure full implementation of the sustainability plan.
” I urge you to take the opportunity of the soon to start 2023 budgeting process to capture the required state funding contributions for UNICEF supported interventions and to provide strategic state resources for the sustainability to all gains obtained so far in the education sector from GEP3 and by and large from the partnership with UNICEF, ” she said.
