Tackling the Largest Global Education Challenge? Secular and Religious Education in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

With more than ten million children out of school, Nigeria is the country furthest away from universal primary education. Low access to school is concentrated in the north of the country where a tradition of religious education has been seen as both a constraint and an opportunity. This paper uses recent survey data to explain household decisions related to secular and religious education. It demonstrates a shift in attitudes with unobserved household characteristics that favor religious education attendance being negatively correlated with secular school attendance after controlling for a rich set of background variables. The paper also provides quantitative evidence to support the argument that the poor quality of secular education acts as a disincentive to secular school attendance. This finding cast doubts at policy attempts to increase secular school enrolment through the integration of religious and secular school curricula.

Awareness of the environmental implications of the unsustainable use of biomass energy sources among rural households in Jigawa State, Nigeria

“…The results in Table 1 further reveal that the majority of the respondents' have only Qur'anic education (71.7%), are married (90.8%), and have a household size between 6 and 10 persons (53.3%). This result supports the assertion of Antoninis (2014) [16] that the education pattern in Northern Nigeria is traditionally dominated by religious education, with Islam being the major religion, and that, instead of improving the people's life, this has caused a decline in circular education in the area and resulted in so many of them being illiterate.…”

Teacher motivation and job satisfaction: a case study of North West Nigeria

“…Although these factors are expected to reduce job satisfaction, we found that these results do not support the hypothesis posed. An explanation for this peculiar finding is the poor educational state of Northern Nigeria (Antoninis, 2014;British Council, 2014). With the poor enrolment and retention of primary school pupils in North West Nigeria, teachers in this region of the country may not feel demotivated from having a full or over-full classrooms, or from having to teach too many classes.…”

“…Nevertheless,the country currently struggles to meet the United Nations millennium development goals 2 and 3 relatingto increasing primary education completion rate and eliminating gender disparity in education access. Comparative studies put Nigeria among the 10 countries with the lowest levels of primary school enrolment in the world (Antoninis, 2014). According to the British Council (2014), 28% of Nigerian men and 40% of its women have no education, the primary school net enrolment rate is below 65%, and more than 10.5 million children are out-of-school (Antoninis, 2014).…”

“…Comparative studies put Nigeria among the 10 countries with the lowest levels of primary school enrolment in the world (Antoninis, 2014). According to the British Council (2014), 28% of Nigerian men and 40% of its women have no education, the primary school net enrolment rate is below 65%, and more than 10.5 million children are out-of-school (Antoninis, 2014). These challenges are even greater in Northern Nigeria.…”

“…For example, in North-West and North-East Nigeria two-thirds of the women in the region have no education (British Council, 2014). Primary education in Northern Nigeria is often through religious forms like Islamic/Arabic schools because people in rural, poor, hard-toreach communities in the region are not able to access secular education (Antoninis, 2014). Nevertheless, the country has not taken full advantage of using these religious schools to improve the state of education in the region.…”