By Chinonso Kenneth
FCT, Nigeria: Victoria Linus’s world was turned upside down with the sudden passing of her husband in 2015 throwing her into a state of uncertainty. As a mother committed to equipping her four children with formal education, her meagre earnings from her petty trading was insufficient to cover the costs. This left her in a dire predicament, choosing between how to maintain her family’s daily costs while still securing their future through education.
Because of this, two of Victoria’s children, Favour, then 13, and her younger brother, Marvellous, had to stop schooling, “because of the delay in my education, my uncles and aunties suggested that I should be married off when I turn 14,” Favour told The SolutionsPaper. “I was just praying to God to get into school before the plan of these people will be approved.”
With Favour having been out of school for two years at the time, her late father’s relatives began to press on. It was at this point that Victoria heard about a secondary school in Kuje –an area council in the outskirts of Nigeria’s Federal Capital– and learned that the school was specifically designed for low-income families who could not afford to send their children to school. Students seeking admission into a public junior secondary school in Kuje have to pay the sum of N37,000, a cost practically impossible for many residents in the area who live on less than N3,175 ($2.15) per day.
The school known as Knowledge, Solutions, Skills and Kreativity (KNOSK) or just ‘N100-A-DAY’ Charity Secondary School began operations in September 2019, providing skills-based education to out-of-school children from poor homes. The idea is, for N100 (US$0.07) per day, students can get books, uniforms, daily lunch, and sanitary pads monthly.
“I got into KNOSK in 2019 and I did not have to pay anything. For five years now, my mother has not been worrying about anything regarding my education,” Favour, now 18 years old, told The SolutionsPaper. Since enrolling in Junior Secondary School 1 or JSS 1 at KNOSK, Favour’s education has been made possible by private donors who sponsor students at the school.
A low-cost private education
Prior to the establishment of KNOSK, its co-founder, Irene Bangwell, grew dissatisfied with her role as a learning design and education consultant in private schools. She wanted to make a more meaningful impact in the public education sector in Nigeria. This desire sparked an exploration of the public education system, which left her both astonished and motivated by the discoveries she made.
“The first thing that stood out for me was that private school caters to only 17 percent of Nigerian school children. The rest are in public schools, yet, there are still children that are out of school,” Bangwell said.
In 2019 alone, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) witnessed a staggering 4,000 secondary school dropouts, with Kuje accounting for at least 5 percent of this total. This trend is typical of a broader crisis in Nigeria, where 19.7 million children are out-of-school, and 84 million people struggle to make ends meet, living below the poverty line. Amidst a crippling 33.6% inflation rate, many Nigerian families face an impossible choice: send their children to school or prioritise basic survival needs.
One morning in April, Bangwell had a moment of introspection seeking ways to make a meaningful impact. It was then that she received the inspiration to establish the KNOSK N100-A-DAY Charity Secondary School.
At the school there is a specific intent to also teach vocational skills. According to Mustapha Ibrahim, a 17-year-old student at KNOSK, “I’ve [gotten] training in solar installation and how to operate a computer and I’ve used that privilege to teach other children from the community on how to use solar and other things.”
Including vocational and computer training to the curriculum at KNOSK is a deliberate strategy to equip students with income generating and livelihood skills which they can leverage on even after they graduate.
“Only about 10 percent of children from low-income families end up in universities so we’re looking at the number of our students and saying if out of 150, only 15 are guaranteed to get into the university [and] if we’re going to enable them to break the circle of poverty, we had to find a way to provide them other learnings that prepares them for life,” Bangwell said.
Timileyin Akinlayo, a JSS 3 student at KNOSK said he has already learned how to make a small-scale solar power generator capable of powering a fan, light bulbs and other small appliances. Akinlayo, who also works at an electrician’s workshop as an apprentice after school, said KNOSK vocational training compliments his after-school work.
To identify students for enrolment, recommendations are solicited from public primary schools head teachers, traditional chiefs and religious leaders. KNOSK officials also conduct house-to-house visits to confirm if said students are from low-income homes and those who are eligible for admission sit for an entrance exam.
Currently KNOSK carters to 151 students from JSS1 to SS2 with its first set of students expected to graduate in September 2025. “I might have dropped out of school,” Mustapha, one of the students set to graduate soon told The SolutionsPaper. He suggested that without KNOSK, things would have been different, “because my parents would not have had the funds to send me to school.”
Are charity schools sustainable?
KNOSK maintains a policy that ensures students are never turned away due to unpaid fees despite charging a relatively affordable sum of N6,000 per term. This policy, while commendable, has had a significant impact on the financial stability of the school, with the feeding program and staff remuneration taking a heavy toll. Without adequate funds, KNOSK’s resources are stretched thin, jeopardising the quality of education and the well-being of its staff.
“In the last one year, inflation has made a joke of whatever we’ve raised, right now, even if all of our children are sponsored 100 percent, only 60 percent of our annual budget will be covered and so many things are suffering including staff salaries and our school feeding program,” Bangwell explained.
KNOSK has also faced resistance from a portion of parents who are reluctant to enrol their children in the school, despite its commitment to providing affordable education. “There are funny situations where the father doesn’t care but the mother is interested. There are situations where for every little thing the daughter does, the father threatens to give her out in marriage,” Bangwell told The SolutionsPaper.
Child marriages are illegal in Nigeria but prevalent. Due to the high poverty rate, dowries on child brides are very attractive for families with low-economic status. For male children whose parents cannot afford to send them to school, they are often forced to engage in child labour through street hawking or working in workshop through an apprenticeship system.
In Case You Missed It
The Unique School Program that Made a Difference in Gidan-Yaro
To reach students who had stopped attending school, Nigeria set up “non-formal learning centers” in some states where children could attend lessons three days a week in both Hausa and English, giving them the foundational knowledge needed to re-enter the public school system. Between 2016 and 2021, more than 31,000 children transitioned from non-formal learning centers to public primary schools.
Bangwell also noted that for children who have learning disabilities, some of the traditional methods of classroom assessments and instructions might have to be alternated with other teaching methods like the KNOSK TopGrader, a class that provides one year literacy and numeracy lessons for students who did not pass the entrance exam. This is not quite recognised as part of Nigeria’s school curriculum. As such, government school regulators do not always view KNOSK’s innovations around classroom learning as standard.
Pearl Utuk, a child education development expert, expressed that government support at every level, including the local council in Kuje, could significantly enhance the positive impact of KNOSK Charity School.
“And with the school having no intention of conducting school fees-drive, then they have to rely primarily on philanthropy. I would encourage them to seek out a life time endowment fund so that as long as KNOSK exist as an entity, they will have funding from a major donor.”
Utuk’s assertion highlights the potential for collaboration between private institutions like KNOSK and public entities to create a more robust and far-reaching educational system in Nigeria. By tapping into the resources and reach of the government, KNOSK could multiply its efforts, reaching more children in need and improving out-of-school children’s chances for a brighter future.
Credits
Editing: Zubaida Baba Ibrahim
This story was produced in partnership with Nigeria Health Watch through the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
The SolutionsPaper is a a multimedia outlet leveraging solutions and constructive journalism to spur civic action and participation in development issues across Africa.