Every year, on October 11th, the world comes together to celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child (IDG), a day dedicated to highlighting the unique challenges girls face in accessing education, empowerment opportunities, and social inclusion. This day serves as a reminder to duty bearers and stakeholders of their crucial roles in supporting girls, enabling them to realise their full potential and contribute meaningfully to society. The theme for the 2024 IDG, “Girls’ Vision for the Future,” brings into focus the importance of empowering girls, not just for their well-being, but as a vital foundation for the peace and development of society.

Mohammed is a beneficiary of a program initiated by UNICEF in equipping teachers with essential skills in the following areas; Gender-Based Violence, Psychosocial Support, Child Protection, and Responding to Emergencies. The objective of this program is to provide students with essential knowledge on self-protection during emergencies, as well as to train teachers in identifying signs of emotional imbalance in children and providing necessary care when required.

The Kano State Government, in collaboration with the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) PLANE and Arewa Consultative Forum, hosted the Education Recovery Conference on July 10th and 11th, 2024. This event brought together thought leaders, political actors, diplomats, educators, private sector players, advocates and policymakers to address significant challenges in Kano’s education sector.

The Kano State Government, with the support of the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) in Nigeria and Arewa Consultative Forum, is set to convene an education recovery conference on 10th and 11th of July, 2024. The conference featuring thought leaders, political actors, diplomats, educators, private sector players, advocates and policymakers, will focus on addressing significant education sector challenges in Kano State.

This blog aims to equip funders, implementers, and practitioners with the adaptive strategies needed to effectively navigate swiftly evolving landscapes, based on the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) work in conflict-affected states of Nigeria over the past decade.

Promoting the recruitment of female teachers is not only an essential step towards achieving gender equality, but also contributes to creating a more diverse, inclusive, and enriched educational environment and safer schools for women to teach and for girls to learn. Encouraging the recruitment of female teachers involves recognising the unique contributions
they bring to the profession and addressing barriers that may impede their entry into the field. Representation matters, and having female teachers provides important role models for both male and female students.

The connection between language and education is very visible and paramount. Language has a profound impact on education. Many children start school with knowledge of concepts in their mother tongue but cannot relate to the same concepts in school because they are unfamiliar with the language of the classroom. In order to fully realise the benefits of education in the mother tongue, it is essential for policymakers and educators to recognise the importance of language as a tool for learning and development.

Village Saving and Loan Association (VSLA), is a strategy of the PLANE programme, implemented by Save the Children to improve household economic status of parents and caregivers in communities. The objective of VSLA is to bring people of the same interest and similar livelihoods together to enable them save and access loans from their savings to invest in a profitable income generating activities.

Malam Musa teaches at a Community Learning Hub, an initiative under the FCDO-funded Partnership for Learning for All (PLANE) programme. These Community Learning Hubs provide a safe space for both in-school and out-of-school children to learn basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Native language education is helping children from the Kanuri ethnic group in northeast Nigeria learn in their indigenous language and improve their literacy and numeracy capacity.

The Partnership for Learning for All in Nigeria (PLANE) project makes the community learning festivals possible. At the close of the school year in July 2023, PLANE staff worked with local leaders and community members to host learning festivals, giving students the chance to show their communities what they had learned.

A delegation from the British High Commission, PLANE and DAI was in Jigawa State on Wednesday, 8 November, to show support to the state government as it begins the roll-out of transformative education reforms under the new administration’s 12-point agenda. The team met with the Governor, Malam Umar Namadi and his cabinet members, and attended an Education Reform Dialogue convened by the Ministry of Basic Education and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology in Jigawa State.