Closing the school attendance gap in rural communities in Nigeria: school leadership and multi-actor approach in community engagement

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make a case for school leaders in rural schools in Nigeria to build effective engagements with their communities in improving school attendance rate.  The state of rural education in Nigeria has been a concern going by the fact that rural communities have the highest number of school dropouts and illiterate people. No country can make headway with a large army of illiterates and school dropouts because education is regarded as an instrument for national transformation. A good number of rural students do not show commitment towards attendance. While the government is often looked upon to address this issue, there seems to be limited focus on rural schools, especially the role of leadership, in addressing the challenge. Therefore, the paper proposes that rural school leaders should adopt a multi-actor approach in engaging their communities to mobilise both human and material resources in addressing poor student attendance and other school challenges associated with the problem. The paper also proposes an approach or a model of engagement.