Drop out From School among Girls in Edo State: Implications for Counselling

Drop out from school among girls is a global phenomenon. In Nigeria, girl’s dropout from school for various reasons like early marriage, pregnancy, religious factors, socio-economic factors, school related factors and ill health. The focus of this paper is to investigate why girls dropout from school in Edo State. The descriptive survey method was adopted for this study. A checklist on reasons for drop out was used in gathering information from the respondents. From a pool of primary schools, secondary schools and skill acquisition centres in Benin City, four primary schools, four secondary and four skills acquisition schools were randomly selected for the study. Data was analysed using percentages. Poverty had the highest percentage (53%), while death of parents, pregnancy, ill health, inadequate teaching had the least percentage of 1%. It is recommended that counsellors should identify indigent students, who are likely to dropout of school as a result of poverty, and help negotiate some form of scholarship or financial assistance for them. Key Words: dropout, school, girls, counselling.