Female dropouts: Groups advocate review, implementation of second chance edu. policy

From Femi Oyelola, Kaduna.

Disturbed by the high rates of of female dropouts who were unable to complete their secondary education due to early marriage, the Basilieia Vulnerable Persons Rights Initiative (BVPRI) in partnership with the Helen Memorial Foundation (HMF) has called on stakeholders to support the review and effective implementation of the Second Chance Education Policy, in Kaduna.
This call was made at a one-Day sensitization and data gathering meeting with relevant stakeholders in the education sector of the state.
Our correspondent reports that the goal of the meeting was to create awareness of the gaps in the implementation of the second chance policy and gain the commitment of participants to support the Advocacy ICT Remote Learning for Out of school Married Adolescents (AIRLOMA) Project.
Founder and Executive Director of BVPRI, Mrs. Jennifer Agbaji noted that the rate of our children in the state is alarming, and it affects the development of the state leading to a high illiteracy rate.
According to her, the organization is working to see that married adolescent girls who dropped out of school can re-enrol, be retained and fully complete at least their secondary education.
She adds: “Kaduna state is very keen on education, we observed the second chance policy allows for people who are dropouts to return to school.
“However, we feel that it has not been utilized and research shows that even those who key into the program become second-time dropouts.
“So, we saw the need to advocate for the review of the policy to allow for ICT remote learning so that the school can come to these School Married Adolescents (OMAs), thereby reducing the daily struggles of combining school and marital responsibilities, in the long run, bridging the gap in learning.”
Furthermore, she said the expected advocacy result of the project is for the Commissioner of Education to approve the review of the second chance policy, to include the options of remote learning OMAs.
“For now, we are working with the out-of-school married adolescents from different communities in Kaduna State, and also the teachers and principals of schools to know if they have been taking in students based on the Second Chance Program.
“We also want to know the number that have been re-enrolled and if they are still in school or not. We also work with the Ministry of Education, with the Gender Desk Officer in charge of the second chance policy,” she stressed.
She therefore urged the State Government to look into the policy and help facilitate its implementation so that the targeted beneficiaries can start returning to school.
In her words: “We want the government to approve the review of the second chance education policy cause if they do that, other programs can follow.
“Before you talk of programs you need to have a policy that will give you an enabling environment to fly. So we want them to approve and facilitate it so it can be implemented.”
Responing, the Representative from the Ministry of Education, Mariam Ibrahim Abubakar, said that the State has made provision for the implementation of the Second Chance Policy which is captured in Section 6 of the Kaduna State Education Policy.
She also shares the results of their journey so far on the implementation of the policy.
According to her: “Today’s meeting is very interesting and educative and I also believe that when the policy is implemented, it will help our adolescent married girls to improve their learning by bringing them back to school to continue their education.
“We have developed the second chance policy for Kaduna State and this year, we are going to start implementing the policy even though we have started since 2018 that time, it was not developed but now we have it. So we are going to start implementation, fully for this year.
“From 2018-2020, we have reached about 10 Local government, 14 communities. So we are going to continue from where we stopped and continue by extending the project to other LGAs.
“The time we started in 2018, we were collaborating with the Planning and Budget Commission, and UNFPA were the ones
Supporting the project, but now, the State is going to be the one supporting the project and we have it in our budget plans to scale it to other LGAs.”
This project is being implemented by the Basileia Vulnerable Persons Right Initiative (BVPRI) and Helen Memorial Foundation (HMF) and funded by Rise Up, a program of the Public Health Institute, through funding from the Cummins Foundation.
Also, the advocacy will be supported by the married adolescent girls and other CSOs working on education.