Reading this, I can't help but feel like there is a weird correlation here going on.

It seems less specifically about the school and more about the support system and the safe place that this program gave to the girls.

It sounds like this was a program specifically built to target the reasons they were not staying in school in the first place. Which obviously is a good thing but just simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here.

That is an important distinction since the question to me remains if the numbers would continue without the program specifically in place.

Am I misunderstanding something here?

This is not a one-off study. There is a long record of similar studies showing that the number of years of education a girl receives delays marriage, and while longer schooling delays marriage longer, it is not just because girls are busy. Schools inherently provide female social support, and education provides increased self-reliance.

This is pretty easy to reason through: if a girl knows nothing about the world, a safe place for her to be is with someone who knows more. If a girl knows how to function in the world on par with a boy/man, or at least has visibility into a future where she can, there is no longer that fear/dependence cycle locked in.

eg How Much Education Is Needed to Delay Women's Age at Marriage and First Pregnancy? https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/...

The power of education to end child marriage - UNICEF DATA https://data.unicef.org/resources/child-marriage-and-educati...

I think so. These girls still live with their family, it’s not like they’re in some cordoned off area where marriage if forbidden. It’s just a few hours of school every weekday.

Basically there is social pressure to marry early if you’re not occupied in some way or have less prospects for employment after education.

> simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here

> Am I misunderstanding something here?

"Stayed in school" is a clear, binary condition that's easily measured and has obvious benefits to everyone because everyone is at least a little educated.

If I ask you "is your house temperature livable?" and you say "the thermometer says 20", answered. You didn't say "well, I purchased and installed a heat pump and duct distribution system capable of forcing warmed air to be distributed to the remainder of the house, which keeps the temperature in a habitable range, then ensured power supply remains connected and kept it on" and say I didn't really explain the important part.

Reminds me of a uni project I did.

Using official Kenyan government statistics (back when Open Data was en vogue) for school attendance and access to sanitation, we tried to find out whether there's a correlation between school attendance of kids and their access to different types of sanitation (ranging from "flush toilet connected to main sewer" to "out in the bush"). We titled the project "Happy Butts, Happy Pupils". [0]

Learning 1: Districts with better sanitation have higher school attendance.

Learning 2: "VIP latrine" is a very funny and (unintentionally?) fitting name.

[0] TL;DR for anyone interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y5szIPCOnL4pyu67wu1MTRw8KSA...

Yes - it's correlation from the factors you mentioned.

not familiar with nigera perse but in most places with child marriage, the marriage is the reason girls drop out of school.

other then that often its financial reasons. they will put boys to school because those are classically expected to take care of the family while girl will be married off to some guy. (ofc this is changing in a lot of places bits its the historical reasons afaik)

> Am I misunderstanding something here?

No, you are right - especially in Northern Nigeria.

Northern Nigeria is in the midst of a protracted Islamist insurgency by Al Qaeda and ISIS where jihadis have often targeted government institutions like schools and kidnapped and subsequently assaulted and trafficked female students, such as in Chibok [0], Papiri [1], and Kebbi [2].

Marriage is viewed from an economic and safety lens in these kinds of communities - if education can provide both then a girl can continue to be educated. If not, marriage is the easiest solution.

This Pathways program had added security monitoring that reduced the risk of girls potentially being made a "war bride" (ie. sex slave) by a jihadist, and never to see their family again, which incentivized families to continue to support their daughters education instead of deciding to marry them off early.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chibok_schoolgirls_kidnapping

[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w7621xypyo

[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/world/africa/nigeria-scho...

Yes this is the classical correlation vs causation situation.

> Am I misunderstanding ...

NO. I've seen quite a few things, across many cultures, pointing out that girls being any combination of low-value, low-status, and unsupported leads to them ending up as "cheap bodies".

That includes several American women friends, whose life stories include getting married at age 17-ish - because, with the situations in their own families, that really looked like their least-bad option.