Girl Child Education head bemoans parental irresponsibility

Mrs. Catherine Nutsuga-Mikado, incoming Head of the National Girl ChildEducation Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has bemoaned thehigh level of parental irresponsibility in the country.

She said thiscontributed to the high dropout rate of girls, especially from schools in theAkatsi North District, where she had just ended her duty tour as the firstDistrict Director of Education.

Mrs Nutsuga-Mikadowas addressing an educational forum by the Parliamentary Select Committee onEducation (PSCE) at Ave-Dakpa in the Akatsi-North district, as part of itsnational exercise to find and tackle challenges facing education delivery.

Personnel inEducation, the Assembly, teachers, local school management teams, pupils,parents and traditional authorities participated.

Stakeholderperformance and responsibility shortfalls, overcrowding, resource constraints,attitudinal inhibitions, including community hostility to the teacher and theroad map to improvements, formed part of issues examined.

There is high levelof child labour and neglect of kids to fend for themselves and it is affectingretention of girls in particular, Mrs. Nutsuga-Mikado stated.

Mrs. Nutsuga-Mikado,also a former Volta Regional Girl Child Education Officer, also admonishedteachers to refrain from refusing rural postings, saying rural kids are alsoGhanaian children.

She said throughfrantic efforts, the education directorate, the Assembly and Member ofParliament (MP) had facilitated improvement in the BECE results this year.

Mrs. Nutsuga-Mikadosaid in view of the growing awareness about the importance of education, pupilpopulation had risen from 5,086 in 2013 to 8,136 this year with some classsizes as high as 121 at the Kindergarten level and 110 at the JHS level insteadof 35.

Mr PeterNortsu-Kotoe, MP for the area and PSCE Vice-Chairman, who donated 500 lessonnotes, 500 class registers and 1,000 flat file to the area, appealed to donorsto assist the Assembly in its educational challenges.

He said problemssuch as teacher accommodation were beyond the scope of the infant Assembly fornow.

Pupils during theirgroup work accused teachers of idling on their cellular phones for long periodsneglecting teaching, while parents admitted their irresponsibility in childcare.

Mr. Puozaa MathiasAsoma, PSCE Chairman asked the five-member road map oversight committee, formedas part of the project, to work hard, saying they would be called to giveaccount on their efforts before the PSCE in Accra.

Mr. James Gunu,District Chief Executive (DCE), reiterating his outfits resolve to supporteducation in the area, announced that the number of teacher trainees sponsoredwould be increased.