The Girl-Child Can Make it: Strengthening the Management of Basic Education Schools through Counseling Strategies – A Case Study of North West Zone of Nigeria

Abstract

With the adoption of new Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations in September 2015, the need to translate into action its lofty ideals become necessary. This is against the backdrop of increasing low enrolment, retention, progression and completion on one hand and high rate of drop out, withdrawal and gender discrimination which remains a challenge to Girls’ education on the other. The research design adopted for this study was descriptive survey method. A sample of 338 was selected through simple random sampling from a population of 2,800 comprising of educational administrators, teachers, pupils/students, parents/guardians and Non-Governmental Organizations. The instrument of the study was a 55-item questionnaire developed by the researchers and standardized by experts, which was used for data collection. Two research questions were posed and corresponding hypotheses were raised, tested and analyzed by the use of the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient statistical calculations. The findings of the study revealed that poor planning, instructional supervision and absence of effective guidance and counseling were identified as some of the factors responsible for unsuccessful implementation of Basic Education Schools in Nigeria.