Individual students, instructors, and other education workers were often targeted by armed assailants who claimed or thought to be members of Boko Haram in single or coordinated attacks that often took place at schools between 2013 and 2017. Teachers and students were shot, killed, kidnapped, and threatened. From 2013 to 2017, there were more attacks against students and teachers than there were from 2009 to 2013. Boko Haram carried out repeated mass abductions of hundreds of students at a time, as well as large-scale bombs that killed and maimed scores of students and education professionals, affecting more kids and instructors than the previous attacks.

As a result of government harassment and arrest of teachers and pupils at Quranic schools and mosques, which the government claimed were inciting young people to violence, Boko Haram justified its violent actions throughout the period.

Although at a lower rate than Boko Haram, government security forces also targeted civilians, including school teachers and alleged and actual Boko Haram members.[1522] Human Rights Watch documented the extrajudicial killing of three teachers and two non-teaching staff suspected of being Boko Haram members or informants by government forces from 2012 to 2015. .[1523]

Boko Haram killed 126 schoolchildren and 70 teachers in Borno and Yobe states alone in 2013, according to the United Nations, as attacks on students became more regular than previously documented. Between January and November 2013, according to Amnesty International, 30 teachers were shot, some of them during class, by unknown assailants.

In 2013, GCPEA received reports of at least 14 incidences of killings, injuries, or abductions of about 79 pupils and education professionals in Borno and Yobe states.[1527] Each of these attacks was carried out by Boko Haram or unknown perpetrators. One instance of government forces harassing a teacher was also discovered by the GCPEA.

With only one incidence reported in 2015, similar attacks continued to occur at a reduced rate. On May 8, 2015, a shooter dressed in a suicide vest and suspected of having ties to Boko Haram opened fire on kids undergoing security checks outside a school in Potiskum, Yobe state, according to international media. After then, the attacker fired scattered shots throughout the school, killing one student and injuring five others, according to Human Rights Watch .[1542]

Two years later, the next attack on students and educators was reported. At a school in Kwaya Kusar on December 1, 2017, an unidentified assailant killed two boys and injured two others, including a female teacher.

According to UNICEF, the man entered the schoolyard with a machete and sought to chat to several of the children, according to Reuters. He attacked the female teacher when she confronted him. Before additional people were hurt, two local youngsters intervened. It was unknown whether the assailant was a member of Boko Haram.