Girls' Education Plus

The Girls’ Education Project in Nigeria was DFID’s largest girls’ education project globally, with DFID providing 100% funding to UNICEF as the implementing partner.

Cambridge Education was responsible for conducting a feasibility study for the project, which identified key opportunities and risks in respect to working on girls’ education in Nigeria, and later for evaluating the project’s first phase.

The evaluation particularly focused on the process for disbursing school grants in order to provide a model for phase two. Over the project lifetime, enrolment in the six programme states increased between 10-15%. By the end of 2005 the gender gap in the programme’s schools had been reduced to an average of 21.3%, down from 36.6% in 2003. The project’s advocacy and social mobilisation strategies also proved effective both at federal and state level and in traditional and religious leadership at local level.