Advocacy to encourage pupils and students to return to the classrooms, “Back-to-School Campaign” has been institutionalized by the Ghana Education Service (GES) across the 16 regions in the country.
The campaign will sensitize parents, pupils, and their communities, and as well as disseminate guidelines for the prevention of pregnancy among school girls and facilitate re-entry into school after childbirth.
At a training workshop for stakeholders including teachers, headteachers, chiefs, queen mothers, and civil society organizations in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region on Monday and Tuesday, 14 and 15 December 2020, the National Coordinator for Guidance and Counselling at GES Mrs Ivy M. Kumi, stresses that the campaign is targeted at teenage girls who might have dropped out of school as a result of pregnancy before or during the outbreak of COVID-19 and may feel stigmatize when return to school.
As part of measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease, the government of Ghana has imposed tight restrictions including a ban on schooling since Monday, 16 March, 2020, especially primary and first-year classes of Junior and Senior High Schools.
However, President Nana Akufo-Addo in one of his nation’s addresses indicated that schools would reopen for learners in Kindergarten, Primary, first-year Junior, and Senior High School in January 2021 to begin the 2020/2021 academic year.
A facilitator of the workshop, Nana Tsumasi Dankwa – Gyasehene of Koforidau New Juaben and a GES staffer with the regional education directorate told Rite FM that the need for the exercise was borne from the fact that more school-going girls are becoming victims of teenage pregnancy.
Data available from the Education Management Information System (EMIS) Ghana indicated that a total of 35,362 female students from Upper Primary to Senior High School got pregnant between 2014/15 and 2018/19 academic years.
The Junior High School girls being the greatest victim with 24,003, upper primary and SHS have recorded 6,559 and 4,800 respectively for the same period.
Having recorded a total of 7,293 pregnancies among school-going girls in the 2018/2019 academic year, Ashanti and Eastern regions were the biggest victims with 1,221 and 831 respectively.
The participants stated among other things that broken homes, high poverty rates, lack of responsible parenting, sexual abuse and low level of sex education at the basic school as some key detractors that should be giving attention in the various communities.
In his closing remarks as chairperson of the two days training workshop, Nene Asada Ahor – Chief for Akuse urged participants to seriously take up the campaign to various human converging points including markets, churches, mosques, game centers or cinema for larger dissemination of the information.
He also appealed to the media to use their mass communication medium to sensitize the general public on the need to collectively motivate children to get back to school.
A full stream of academic activities is expected to take off in January, 2021 across all levels of the country’s education.
Source: Omanba Kodwo Boafo/ritefmonline.org
