School authorities at the Ayetepa District Assembly ‘B’ Junior High School in the Ningo-Prampram district of Greater Accra are having unending sleepless nights over what they describe as the alarming rate at which the basic school is losing its best crop of pupils, particularly girls, to teenage pregnancy.

For the past seven years, not a single term has passed without a pupil dropping out of school due to pregnancy; and not a single term has ended without a very gory case of illegal abortion innocent foetus popping up. The usual excuse for the murder of the fetuses is that their mothers must continue their education.

And as if the various interventions employed to address this trend are not enough; this term, the authorities had yet another shock, if not the biggest, when they learnt that two Class 2 pupils had got pregnant, hence, their absence from class.

If the Class 2 status of the pregnant girls surprises you; wait till you have heard their ages, you could be shocked: one was 18, the other 20 years old. So grown are most of the pupils of the Ayetepa D/A ‘B’ JHS that free uniforms allocated to the school under the government’s free uniform policy have been bagged in sacks and kept in closets because there is no one to wear it.

Information gathered by The Heritage suggests that what has accounted for this dilemma is a myth that makes rounds at the Ayetepa community that, if a girl inches past the age of 18 without getting pregnant; she faces such undue torture as caning when she dies and crosses to the next world.

That aside, lack of parental control and guidance have been cited as one of the major reasons for the spate of teenage pregnancy in the area as most of the students literally live on their own.

According to one of the teachers who spoke to The Heritage under strict anonymity for fear of incurring the wrath of a section of the community, the issue is an open secret that faces tough resistance for anyone who wants to holistically address it.

Recounting the ordeal some teachers went through because of their resolve to deal with the situation, he intimated that teachers, who had volunteered to book pupils who roam about in town after 8:00 p.m. or are found at funeral grounds, had been pelted with stones and water.

He believed that the only authority that can solve the problem at hand is the minister of education, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, who can institute punitive measures to deter unscrupulous men who lure the promising but naïve girls and impregnate them.

“A pain I will always carry in my mind is about a brilliant girl who, last year, dropped out of school because she had been impregnated by only God-know-whom. We have had several meetings with the chief of the area to see how we can, possibly, solve this albatross but all the interventions have failed,” the worried-looking educator lamented.

He revealed that most of the students are in the school on their own volition but not because of their parents’ wishes. “Their parents are fish folks who sometimes ply their trade as far as Akosombo; that is where they take the children when they are young and use them for fishing. So, then they grow up and realize that education is important, they run to the village to educate themselves,: he explained.

“We are doing our best to give them sex education and condom use but what can you do when a girl who is fending for herself decides to go for a boyfriend? When they get pregnant, they stop coming to school; we get to know through their friends who usually start laughing when you ask why they are absent,” he grieved.

As if the school’s woes are not enough, teachers of Ayetepa JHS have to sit outside the classroom to prepare their lesson notes and supervise the children because the classrooms are congested.

The only library in the school has turned into a white elephant as there are no funds to furnish the block with tables, shelves and books.

Alex Teye Djimeh, assembly member for Ayetepa, says he was overwhelmed by the disproportionately high incidence of teenage pregnancy, attributing the development to parents shirking their responsibility.