Education for women is non-negotiable - Minister

The Minister for Basic, Secondary and Girl-Child Education, Miss Christine Churcher has declared that the quest to give girls sound and quality education was "non-negotiable".

She said no one nor group of persons would be allowed to impede the policy until the purpose of ensuring full and equal access to education by women at all levels of the educational ladder was achieved.

Miss Churcher was addressing a grand durbar of students and former students of the Krobo Girls' Secondary School (KROGISS) to round off activities marking the diamond jubilee of the school at Odumase Krobo in the Manya Krobo District of the Eastern Region at the weekend.

The school began as an elementary school in 1927 later became a Teacher Training College before attaining its current status on a piece of land donated by the former Konor of Manya, Sir Nene Mate Korle, who asked the Scottish Missionaries to help to start a school for women of Manya.

Miss Churcher said government remained fully focused on the education of girls and would ensure that all obstacles that impeded the progress and status of women were dealt with dispatch. She urged women especially, queenmothers to be at the forefront in the crusade to drum up public support for the education of girls.

Miss Churcher said it was the failure of women themselves to embrace education, coupled with the prejudices foisted on them, that they were "less intellectually endowed" that was responsible for the low enrolment of girls in schools.

She said contrary to the wishes of Sir Mate Korle in establishing the KROGISS, for instance, less than 50 Krobo citizens were currently enrolled in the school with a population of 600. Miss Churcher, also MP for Cape Coast, stated that failure to reverse such trends would defeat the purpose of ensuring that women became active partners in development, whose inputs should be factored into all national policies.

She attributed the under-development challenges facing many nations, including Ghana to their failure to actively engage women in the running of the state, adding, however, that this could only happen when women themselves, through education, prepared themselves for the task.

The Minister, therefore, charged the students to apply themselves diligently to their studies so as to become useful citizens for the nation. The Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), Mrs Sylvia Awo Boye said considerable progress had been made in championing the rights of women and noted much still needed to be done.

She stressed the need to make it a crime for anybody "to a deny woman the opportunity to explore, discover, develop and deploy her traits for the betterment of society". This, she explained, was in view of the fact that "no society could develop and do so at the right pace if the education of its citizens is skewed against any group within it".

The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, the Right Reverend Dr Sam Prempeh said efforts were being made by the church to provide the school with a vehicle.

He commended the founding fathers of the school for their foresight and pledged the readiness of the church to help to solve some of the problems of the school. The Headmistress of the school, Mrs Gladys Appiah appealed to the Ministry of Education to help find a solution to the problem of encroachment on the school's lands.

She appealed to the Ministry to construct additional bungalows for the staff and complete a number of projects, some which were started 28 years ago. They include a dormitory and dining hall complex. The School Prefect, Janet Quarshie, said 99.4 per cent of students, who graduated last year qualified for the universities and other tertiary institutions.

The Deputy Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Miss Gloria Akuffo, an old girl, who chaired the function, urged the past students to assist the school to overcome some of its difficulties. Prizes were awarded to deserving students.