Education Officer encourages teenage mothers to go back to school

Madam Agartha Osei, Nkoranza South District Girls Education Officer of the Ghana Education Service (GES), has started an exercise aimed at wooing back to school, girls who dropped out of school due to pregnancy .

She has visited communities in the district to identify such drop outs for their re-enrollment in school.

Madam Osei told the Ghana News Agency in an interview at Nkoranza that since the exercise begun, about 30 teenage mothers in the district are back in the classroom and reports show they are performing well.

Fourteen of them are in second-cycle institutions and 16 in Junior High Schools, she said.

She said most of the girls and boys dropped out of school due to “parental neglect and lack of support” as some parents refused to provide them with their necessary basic needs.

Madam Osei said, such unfortunate situations compelled the children to go wayward with the boys engaging in negative practices and the girls in pre-marital sex, resulting in pregnancies.

Madam Osei urged parents to minimize their huge expenses on clothing, funerals and other social activities and to invest in the education of their children.

She commended Nkoranza South District Assembly for its support for the education in the district that has enabled girls to further their education in senior high schools.

Madam Osei appealed to philanthropists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), religious bodies and well-to-do individuals to support the education of girls, especially the needy but promising ones.**