Badamasi Lawal, the commissioner for education in Katsina, says female students performed better than their male counterparts in the 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

Mr Lawal disclosed this at the official closing ceremony of the Girl Education Project (GEP-III) on Thursday in Katsina. He noted that this was recorded as a result of the commitment of the government to empower girls in the state through various educational programmes.

According to him, in 2021, 18,321 students took the WASSCE, and the Katsina government paid the examination fee for all the candidates.

“Out of which 10,441 were male, while the female students were 7,880. But wonderfully, the results indicated that 4,627 of the female students scored credit in the English Language, which is 58.7 per cent,” Mr Lawal explained. “From the 10,441 male students, only 5,632 scored credit in the English Language, which is 54 per cent. This means the girls scored higher than the boys in the English Language.”

In Mathematics, the commissioner revealed that the girls also outperformed the boys “because 5,678 of them scored credits, while only 4,726 of the boys scored credits” and that “because the number of the girls that sat for the examination was lower than that of the boys, the boys scored 58 per cent while the girls scored 53 per cent, which is also higher.”

Mr Lawal added, “Five credits, including Mathematics and English Language, out of the total number mentioned above, 4,247 among the girls scored credit, that is 56 per cent, as against the males who scored only 48 per cent.”

According to him, the project aims to increase access to education among girls and improve teacher capacity and competency.

He noted that all the activities mentioned had been achieved in Katsina through the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) support.

“No doubt the intervention has improved the girl child education in Katsina State. I want to showcase the evidence of this improvement by making a presentation of the 2021 WASSCE results,” the commissioner stated. “It will show you that the presence of UNICEF in the state has done very well in improving girl child education.”

(NAN)