In a developing country like Nigeria, education could be the most potent weapon for the emancipation of the people. The right to education should be the right of all the citizens to social progress. Although equal opportunity exists, there is no equal access to education by boys and girls. The girl-child is at a disadvantage, usually because of societal norms and cultural practices that discriminate against her. Gender stereotype in the society has been identified as one of the causes of poor access of girls to education.

UNICEF (2001) reports that girls in some Northern parts of Nigeria are at a double disadvantage especially in rural areas where disproportionately fewer girls are enrolled in school. This it attributed to the patriarchal attitude about gender role which results in some parents attaching greater importance to the education of boys than girls. Providing access to educational opportunities for girls and women is a great challenge as it is affected by a variety of social, economic, cultural and religious factors. Concerned therefore about the poor access of girls to education, leaders of the nine high population developing countries of the world meeting in Delhi made declarations, which among others, recognized that:

The education and empowerment of girls’ and women are important goals in themselves and are key factors in contributing to social development, well-being and education of present and future generations, and the expansion of the choice available to women for the development of their full potential according to Anikweze (2004)

The Delhi declaration (1990), to which Nigeria is signatory, underscores the need for urgent action to be taken in proffering measures for creating more access to and supporting girls’ education in Nigeria, more especially in the Northern geo-political zones of the country where socio-cultural and religious factors play major roles in the socialization process of the people.

The question of girls’ access to education is also in the fore-front of various world summits. For instance, the World Education Forum in Dakar 2000 had set among other goals:

Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.

One of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals agreed at the Millennium Summit of World Heads of States in New York in 2000 was gender equality with particular regard to access to education. The issue of women’s and girls’ education had been discussed at the Fourth World Conference in Education for All in Jomtien in 1990. The outcomes of this Conference lent momentum to capacity building programmes for teachers in primary and secondary schools in Sub-Saharan African by UNESCO. Also after the Dakar 2000 World Education Forum (WEF), UNESCO established the International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) to assist African countries in building the capacity of teachers and teacher educators/trainers to meet the demands of the EFA goals.

UNESCO Abuja has been involved in Teacher Education and girls’ education in Nigeria since the 1960s. Some of the programmes implemented include establishing and running school libraries for teachers; teaching reading in primary schools; guidance and counseling with gender sensitivity; ICTs, teaching Science Technology and Mathematics in schools and policy dialogue between the Government, teachers and teacher associations. More recently, training was conducted for teachers on science equipment development and maintenance at the Federal Science Equipment Centre Ijanikin. Teachers, as agents of change have an important role to play in girls’ education. They have a duty to develop appropriate teaching approaches and learning aids that meet the learning needs of girls. Unfortunately, the supply of quality and well-motivated teachers in Nigeria has deteriorated and the deployment of teachers, especially female teachers, to areas of low female enrolment has become a critical area of concern. Furthermore, the priority of INSET for teachers has at best been ad hoc and at most non-existent, making achievement of Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2, 3 and 6 an enormous task.

Concerned about the problems in the Nigerian education sector, UNESCO and UNICEF in the spirit of UNDAF decided on a partnership arrangement that would investigate the effectiveness of teacher training and deployment in the target States. The investigation was designed to explore the areas of gender-sensitive teacher education through INSET, recruitment, deployment, utilization, availability of educational materials, quality and effective delivery of the curriculum in core subjects such as English, Mathematics, Science, Life skills, Gender and girls’ education, adult literacy and ICTs. This was premised on the assumption that a well-trained core of quality teaching personnel with gender sensitive skills would impact positively on girls’ education. The consultancy was designed to provide a clearer picture of the challenges and ways forward at the national level in terms of INSET policy and to establish what needs to be done in the states benefiting from support from the Girls’ Education Project (GEP).

The purpose of the study was, therefore, to promote the development of a common framework for INSET, including head teacher training, which would be initially operationalised in the Girls’ Education Project states in Northern Nigeria.

The objectives were to:

• To develop recommendations for a common framework for primary school INSET in Nigeria, building on existing policy and practice, in collaboration with the Federal and State Governments and the development partners (especially World Bank, DFID, UNICEF and USAID).
• To identify modalities to ensure cost-effective systems for INSET in the six GEP states, including logistics, finance, curriculum content, methodology and monitoring and evaluation.
• To review existing teacher training curricula and materials (especially in the 6 GEP states) in terms of their relevance to the objectives of GEP and recommend an INSET package to ensure that GEP achieves its objectives.
• To identify methods whereby teacher training can address the teacher supply and distribution problems, especially the lack of female teachers, in areas where they are most required to attract girls to school, including open and distance learning and pivotal training.
• To identify linkages between school support services, including the inspector and supervisor cadres and their role in supporting teacher training.
• To develop a framework to ensure the effective monitoring and evaluation of INSET under GEP.