GES urged to redefine role of girls education co-ordinators

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has been asked to redefine the role of girls education co-ordinators to ensure that girls do not only go to school but stay in school to complete their education.

In that regard, GES should find ways to resource the district girls education coordinators to visit schools and homes to deal with and solve problems bothering on the girl-child education.

“The status quo as it is, whereby we have arm-chair coordinators who are not in the field will not yield the needed positive results that we want and stringent steps must be taken to reverse the trend,” Alhaji Amidu Sulemana, Upper West Regional Minister, said.

Alhaji Sulemana was addressing 245 basic school girls drawn from 11 districts of the region who are attending a week-long Regional Girls Camp in Wa.

He said teachers who breached the Code of Conduct by engaging in amorous relationship with school children and students should be made to face the full rigours of the law as it was unethical.

“I want to call on educational authorities and parents never to attempt to shield any such teacher but should willingly expose and give them out to the law enforcement agencies. That is the only way to protect and build a better and prosperous future for our girls,” Alhaji Sulemana said.

The Regional Minister appealed to resource persons to take the girls through practical and relevant ways of life - socially, educationally, religiously, economically and politically to build their confidence level so that they could appreciate their realities of life.

Mr George Dery, ActionAid Programme Manager, said the implementation of the Regional Girls Camp had been sustained as an alternative to improving girls education, especially at the heels of poor performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examinations in 2013.

He said following the increasing numbers of detected cases of pregnant girls at each year’s camp, ActionAid Ghana decided to conduct pregnancy test with the aim of offering counseling services for the girls to reduce the stress and dangers such girls went through when they were found to be pregnant.

Mr Dery said out of the 108 girls sampled for the test for pregnancy, two were found to be pregnant.

He urged government to adopt the ActionAid Girls Camp and Girls Club concepts as alternative approaches to enhancing girls’ education in order to improve Ghana’s chances of achieving Millennium Development Goal two which calls for parity in universal basic education for boys and girls.

ActionAid Ghana, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to fighting poverty and injustice in poor and deprived communities, supports schools in the area of infrastructure, and basic students’ needs.

The intervention is to help nurture girls-self-confidence and self-esteem to aspire to greater heights in their educational pursuance.