The relevance of gender equality to the development process underscores the need for creating opportunities for girls and women to have access to all levels of education – primary, secondary and tertiary. Women require formal education for self and national development. Since Nigeria has a significant population of girls and women, it is imperative that their education is given a pride of place. This paper examines the policies that have been made to promote the education of girls and women at the three levels of education (basic, post-basic and tertiary) in Nigeria, and the situation of girl-child and women’s education in the country. The paper also discusses the challenges confronting education of girls and women, such as high number of out-of-school children caused by child labor practices, early marriage and teenage pregnancy; inadequate female participation rates in higher education; etc. Some actions that could be taken to address the challenges are recommended. These include equalizing access to quality education, provision of welfare support for pupils/students, the establishment of an open school system, enforcing laws on compulsory school attendance at the basic education level, economic empowerment of women, and the promotion of science and technological education among women.

This paper aims to provide guidelines on developing English language proficiency (ELP) tests based on the experience from ELP assessments in the U.S. after the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). While there might be substantial differences between the content and purpose of ELP tests developed from country to country, there are, however, areas that experts in charge of ELP test development in other countries can benefit from. The NCLB legislation in the U.S. made the assessment of English language learners (ELL) students’ level of proficiency in English mandatory once a year and provided useful guidelines for developing ELP assessments. This mandate, along with its useful guidelines, helped improve the quality of ELP assessment significantly and led to the development of several batteries of ELP assessments either through consortia of states or by test publishers in the U.S. The newly developed assessments were based on states’ ELP standards. They incorporated the concept of academic language which is an essential requirement for ELL students’ performance in the academic content areas, and were tested in extensive pilot and field studies. Some implications were drawn from such improvements for ELL assessment and accountability not only in the U.S. but in other countries including Korea.