Nigeria’s new Basic Education Curriculum now requires every student to graduate with at least one practical or trade-related skill, a significant step toward expanding learning pathways and economic opportunity for students across the country.

As this reform takes root, one important question emerges: when girls choose a skill, what shapes how free that choice really feels, especially when it goes against social expectations?

In many Nigerian schools:

- Some skills quietly feel “appropriate” for girls

- Others are seen astoo masculine or out of place

- Parents, teachers, and unspoken social norms shape decisions before a girl even speaks.

In this episode of The Norms Lab Podcast, Anjola Ayodele speaks with educationist and Safe Schools expert Blessing Tarfa Mam about:

- What this curriculum reform is working to achieve

- How gender norms shape students’ realities inside classrooms

- What it would actually take for skills education to expand agency for girls

- What gives Blessing hope that things are changing.

Join us as we reimagine what the freedom of choice truly means amongst gender-biased social norms, as the new education curriculum is implemented.

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