Promoting Girl-Child Education for National Development

Abstract

The paper examined girl-child education in Nigeria and its promotion for national development. The paper was guided by three research questions. It adopted descriptive research design. A total of 147 out of 150 parents randomly selected from five public secondary schools in Akinyele Local Government, Oyo state at 30 per school participated in the study. The instrument for data collection was a self-constructed 25- item questionnaire titled: Girl-Child Education and its Promotion for National Development (GCEPND). It has a test-retest cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.71. The data collected were analyzed using frequency count, mean and standard deviation. The result showed that the respondents perceived female education as crucial to national development, having some challenges in Nigeria and enhanced by many factors. Based on the findings, it was recommended that Governments, parents and stake holders in education should work together to ensure that girls in the society are not deprived of education, rather be well educated so that they can be adequately informed, reformed and able to contribute meaningfully to the development of the country.