Gombe Working With Advocates To Improve Education Access

Social advocates are working with the Gombe state government and players in its education sector to improve gender sensitivity in budgeting and education financing.

The motive is to amongst other things create a systemic structure for increased enrollment and retention in the state’s schools.

This follows findings of a baseline research carried out by a social advocacy organisation Invictus Africa, in two pilot states namely Gombe and Oyo.

In northern Nigeria, statistics of enrollment and retention in schools continues to deteriorate.

Available data shows the numbers for females are even worse.

Invictus a social advocacy organization now says it has identified one of the reasons for this decline and is working to reverse it, using Gombe as a pilot state.

Its solution is gender sensitivity in budgeting and financing.

Gombe has already recorded some success by enrolling about 200,000 out of school children in schools , through its BESDA programme.

However, a lot still needs to be done and these experts are now brainstorming on finding the most efficient approach, to changing the narrative.

The United Nations children fund estimates that there are over 550,000 out of school children in Gombe State.