Education as Social Justice: Why Girls’ Schooling Is the Frontline of Equality

By Abdulmalik Yahya

I used to describe education as a pathway to development. It sounded measured, policy-friendly, and safe. But in communities where girls disappear from classrooms before they turn sixteen, development feels too small a word for what is at stake. Education, especially for girls, is about power. It is about who is seen, who is heard, and who is allowed to imagine a future without apology.

Governments across the world have endorsed frameworks such as Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education, SDG 5 on gender equality, and SDG 10 on reduced inequality. Progress on paper appears encouraging. Gender gaps in primary enrolment have narrowed in many regions and more girls are in school today than two decades ago.

But it is common knowledge that statistics do not reveal the full reality.

Women still account for the majority of the world’s illiterate adults. In fragile and conflict-affected settings, progress remains uncertain because millions of girls still fail to complete secondary education. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed this weakness when schools closed, and girls carried heavier domestic responsibilities. Many were pushed into early marriage or early motherhood and when schools reopened, not all of them returned.

It is not out of place to say that the crisis in girls’ education is not due to a lack of solutions. We know what improves access and retention. It is a power issue. Poverty, harmful norms, weak accountability, and political neglect determine whose education is treated as urgent and whose can wait. Cultural attitudes toward gender roles shape educational decisions in ways that policy alone cannot reverse. Girls’ education in some parts of the country is still weighed against expectations of early marriage, domestic responsibility, or concerns about safety and reputation. Families may value schooling in principle, yet prioritise sons when resources are limited. Changing these patterns requires sustained dialogue with traditional and religious leaders, engagement with parents, and visible examples of educated women contributing meaningfully to their communities.

This reality is clear in Nigeria. I remember going on an outreach to a secondary school in Yola, Adamawa State, where the headteacher quietly told me that about half of the girls who enrolled three years earlier were no longer there. One had been married at fifteen, another had stopped coming because her family could no longer afford basic supplies, and a few had simply “stopped coming,” as the teacher put it, absorbed into domestic work and responsibilities that leave little room for ambition.

I stood at the back of that classroom to count the girls who remained, and they were fewer than a dozen. I kept wondering not only where the others were, but who had decided that their education could wait. The country has one of the largest populations of out-of-school children in the world, estimated at more than 18.3 million by UNICEF Nigeria on the Out Of School Children (OOSC) fact sheet in 2022, with girls accounting for over 50 per cent of those not attending school at the basic education level. 

Girls carry the heavier burden of exclusion in many northern and rural communities. In parts of the North East and North West, fewer than half of school-age girls attend primary school, and many drop out before moving to secondary school because of cost, insecurity, domestic labour, or early marriage.

Schools have become places of fear in some conflict-affected communities. Improving access to education in such places requires coordinated security arrangements, safe school initiatives, and community-based protection mechanisms that allow parents to trust the journey to and from school. Flexible learning models such as temporary learning centres and accelerated education programmes can help girls who have missed years of schooling reintegrate. Recruiting and training female teachers and mentors with access to safe toilets, or basic learning materials even where classrooms exist will also reassure families and strengthen retention. Policy commitments without these layered protections cannot translate into real attendance, which makes parents hesitate before sending their daughters out each morning. 

Nigeria has established the right to free basic education in law and allocates annual budgets for it, but the challenge is implementation and oversight. The perception at the grassroots level is not that government has done nothing, but that promises rarely reach the classroom, parents often speak of projects announced but never completed, teachers posted but never arriving, and budgets approved but never visible. The gap between policy declarations and lived reality fuels skepticism because the question for many families is not whether education is important, but whether the system can be trusted to deliver it, whether communities can track and question those decisions, and whether gender responsive realities shape planning or remain an afterthought.

When we examine girls’ education from a social justice perspective, the questions we ask shift. Instead of simply inquiring about how many girls are enrolled, we begin to consider which girls remain excluded. We also ask who determines how educational resources are distributed and who ultimately benefits from public spending.

Girls from poor and marginalised communities are too often excluded not only by circumstance but by structure. Budgets are prepared without meaningful community input. Projects are implemented without transparency. Gender needs are treated as secondary. Classrooms may be constructed without considering distance, safety, or sanitation. Yet these are the very factors that determine whether a girl can attend and remain in school.

Justice requires participation, accountability, and that those most affected by decisions have real influence over them.

This understanding shapes how I see the work we do at Connected Development through the Girls’ Education Project supported by the Malala Fund. We work to shift power closer to communities and approach girls’ education as citizenship, not charity. The principle is simple. When citizens understand education budgets, track spending, and engage decision makers with evidence, systems become more responsive to girls’ needs.

Parents in one of the communities in Bauchi State where we worked discovered that funds had been allocated for school improvements that never reached the classroom. Using the Follow The Money model and sustained community engagement, the project was revisited and basic facilities, including a girls’ toilet, were completed. Attendance improved because the school environment became safer and more dignified for girls. 

In Bauchi, Ningi, Alkaleri, and Zaki Local Government area where GEP operates, parents, traditional leaders, youth, and civil society actors monitor allocations and follow up on implementation. Budget figures become real commitments tied to classrooms, teachers, and facilities. Dialogue challenges harmful norms and reinforces the value of girls’ education as a shared responsibility. Girls are recognised as rights holders with agency.

This is corrective justice in practice. It redistributes civic power, strengthens transparency, and embeds accountability at the community level, turning education governance into a partnership between citizens and the state.

If we are serious about justice, then three shifts are necessary. Education budgets must be transparent and publicly accessible; gender-responsive planning must be standard practice, not an afterthought; and communities must be empowered to monitor and question how resources are used. Without these shifts, policy promises will continue to fall short.

The global consensus on girls’ education is strong, and the economic case is clear, but justice does not happen because policies are signed. It happens when public commitments translate into safe, functional, and inclusive classrooms.

Girls’ schooling remains the frontline of equality because it sits at the intersection of rights, resources, and representation. When a girl receives a quality education, she gains agency, and her family gains resilience. Her community gains leadership, and her society gains a more equitable future.

Girls’ education sits at the intersection of how resources are allocated, whose dignity is affirmed, and who shapes decisions. Investing in that is not simply a development strategy, but a deliberate intervention in how power is distributed and a statement about whose future matters.

The question is no longer whether girls’ education matters. The question is whether we are willing to confront the structures that keep girls at the margins. Until we do, equality remains a promise on paper, and education remains the clearest way to make social justice visible.