GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT

There are millions of girls in Nigeria who are dropouts from schools due to various factors including lack of value for a girl child. The research design used for this study was a descriptive survey and the research area for this study was Akwa Ibom State. The population of this study comprised all primary 6 pupils and parents in Akwa Ibom State as well as experts in early education. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 100 primary 6 pupils, 50 parents and 25 experts in early education. This gave a sample size of 175 respondents as the size. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire titled “ISSUES IN GIRL CHILD EDUCATION QUESTIONNAIRE (AIGCEQ). Cronbach Alpha technique was used to determine the level of reliability of the instrument. In the trial test, a total of 30 respondents who did not form part of the main study were randomly selected. The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.85 and this was high enough to justify the use of the instrument. The study revealed that there are several issues of high extent of Girl Child Education in Nigeria. Also, there are various factors that hamper Girl Child Education in Nigeria, such as engagement of children as house helps, Girl child labour, lack of sponsorship, broken home, poverty, bereavement and truancy. The result also proved that there are various benefits of educating girls including decrease Infant Mortality. Finally, the results proved that there are various strategies of promoting Child Education in Nigeria including giving girls a strong foundation through early childhood development; focusing on basic education and many more. One of the recommendations was that education has a great role in changing the society therefore, awareness about the importance and impact of educating girls should be elaborated to local communities and societies.

KEYWORDS: Girl Child Education, Values, Importance of Child Education and Remedies