AREAi Kicks off Getting Girls Equal Program with a 3-day Needs Assessment across schools in Oyo state.

Despite Universal Basic Education (UBE), which provides free education for the first nine years of schooling in all Nigerian states, social, traditional, and cultural barriers, as well as infrastructural deficits, continue to be major factors discouraging parents from enrolling their children, particularly girls, in school.

Daily, more girls neglect education due to unimaginable petty reasons, with states in the South West region not left out. To address this, Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative (AREAi) embarks on a 3-day intensive needs assessment and focus group discussions across Ibadan, Oyo, and Ogbomoso, meeting with key stakeholders to obtain and understand their perspectives on the state of affairs within their respective schools as part of the preliminary fact-finding steps in our Getting Girls Equal intervention in OYO state.

The 3-day intensive needs assessment was born out of a need to identify, understand, and hear from the diverse school administrators and teachers in order to gather information on how to tailor our program solutions to meet their needs and achieve the desired learning outcome for all.
The team was led by AREAi Community Engagement Manager Michael Abdullai, Education Programs Officer Martha Olaleye, and Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning Officer Bertha Sewuese to Government School beginning from the ancient Oyo town. Some of the schools visited are Oliver Baptist High School, Baptist Grammar School, Ilora, Anglican Methodist School, Baptist Grammar School, Oke Isanmi Ilora, Community High School, Amuworo, St. Bernadine’s Girls Grammar School, the School of Science, Oranyan Grammar School 1, Ansar Ud Deen High School, and Ansar Ud Deen Grammar School.

The School visitation proved insightful and informative, as all schools welcomed the AREAi team warmly, and proper engagement was made with these school governing boards, representatives of parents and teachers associations, school heads, and students of all these aforementioned schools. The consultative meeting allowed for the exchange of valuable opinions and contributions that will feed into our various programmatic actions to strengthen the delivery and impact strategy aimed at ensuring practical policy reforms for equitable educational provision, particularly for girls in Oyo State.