What It Would Take to Finance School Re-entry at Scale
The Bauchi State School Re-entry Guidelines exist. The policy has been adopted. What is missing is ₦420M and a budget line. This data story shows where that figure comes from — and why it is affordable.
The central finding
₦420M annually
Full implementation of the School Re-entry Guidelines costs less than 0.4% of Bauchi State's annual education budget — and could keep thousands of girls in school each year.
Re-entry financing components — estimated annual cost
Counsellor deployment (120 trained counsellors)
₦1.5M/counsellor/year
₦180M
Catch-up and accelerated learning programmes
₦8,000/learner × 12,000 learners
₦96M
Monthly attendance stipend for returning learners
₦500/month × 12,000 × 12
₦72M
School-level awareness and community engagement
₦1.8M per LGA
₦36M
Monitoring, data collection and reporting
System-level cost
₦36M
Total annual cost
₦420M
Source: EduSpendNG Policy Brief Series on Financing School Re-entry; School Re-entry Guidelines 2025
The policy gap
In 2025, Bauchi State adopted the School Re-entry Guidelines — a set of operational procedures designed to allow girls who become pregnant, marry, or leave school for other reasons to return without discrimination. The guidelines define re-entry pathways, school responsibilities, counselling requirements and protection standards.
As of Q1 2026, zero naira has been allocated to implement them. The guidelines exist as a policy document. They do not yet exist as a funded programme. Schools cannot implement what they cannot pay for.
How the ₦420M was estimated
The ₦420M figure is a bottom-up cost model, not a top-down budget request. It starts with the number of returning learners the programme would need to serve — estimated at 12,000 per year based on secondary-level female dropout rates and re-entry uptake in comparable Nigerian state programmes.
The largest single cost is counsellor deployment: 120 trained re-entry counsellors across 20 LGAs at ₦1.5M per counsellor per year. This is not a new institutional layer — it builds on existing SUBEB guidance structures and could be delivered through LGEAs with minimal overhead.
The affordability argument
Bauchi State's FY 2026 education budget is ₦131.72bn. ₦420M represents 0.32% of that total. It is less than the annual maintenance budget of a medium-sized secondary school. It is less than the cost of one new three-classroom block in an urban LGA.
Against the alternative — thousands of girls permanently excluded from secondary education, with lifetime earnings, fertility and child health consequences — ₦420M is not a cost. It is an investment with a measurable social return.
Who should act
The Ministry of Finance is the proximate actor: re-entry requires a budget line, not just a policy document. SUBEB is responsible for implementation: counsellor training, school-level deployment and monitoring. Development partners — UNICEF, UNFPA, USAID — have expressed interest in co-financing re-entry programmes in northern Nigeria. A credible government co-financing commitment is the precondition for leveraging this support.
What this means for budgeting
The FY 2027 Education Budget should include a dedicated School Re-entry Implementation line of ₦420M under the SUBEB recurrent budget. The Ministry of Finance should confirm this allocation before the next budget cycle begins and invite development partner co-financing.
Source: Bauchi State School Re-entry Guidelines 2025; EduSpendNG Policy Brief Series on Financing School Re-entry; ASC 2024/2025.
Citation: EduSpendNG / Young Leaders Network. (2026). What It Would Take to Finance School Re-entry at Scale. EduSpendNG Data Stories. Bauchi, Nigeria.