Robinson, Lynsey; (2024) A Systems of Provision Analysis of Private and Non-State Sector Engagements in Nigerian Primary Education, 1945-2023: Forming and Reforming Region, Religion and Gender. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The thesis examines the history of private and non-state sector engagements in the Nigerian primary education system from 1945 to 2023, focusing on three states in different regions of Nigeria with varying levels of private school enrolments. It draws on the Systems of Provision (SoP) approach to show that decisions around education are highly context-specific, shaped by cultures that emerge in conjunction with structures, processes, agents, agencies, and relations. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, a large body of academic and policy research in Education and International Development (EID) has examined the role and impact of private and non-state sector actors in education, including research on private schools catering to low-income households, drawing attention to gender and other forms of inequalities associated with these engagements in education. Nigeria has been the site for many empirical studies investigating private schooling in primary education. However, this research was conducted out of concern that studies of private and non-state sector engagements in education systems paid little attention to gender or provided limited insight into historical factors. Taking a case study approach, incorporating historical documentary analysis and in-depth semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the education system in Nigeria, the thesis illuminates the historical contestations around the role of the private and non-state sectors in the primary education system over nearly a century. It has shown how the narratives underpinning these engagements have changed, from being linked to religious processes to concerns with access and enrolments in any form of school, shaped by the relationships between agents structured by political, economic and social configurations. Shifts in the primary education SoP that lead to greater or lesser roles for the private and non-state sectors are not gender neutral, and who provides education matters for how gender (in)equality is conceptualised and engaged with by those in positions of power. Private schools may provide increased access to schooling for some girls in some locations. From a systems perspective, it is possible to see that increasing access alone is not enough to transform gender structures and relations for greater equality.

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