Parents and teachers asked to join in promoting Girl-Child education

Funsi (UW), Jan. 17, GNA – Ms Lydia Jatoe, an Educationist and Gender Activist, has called on parents and teachers to join hands in moulding the character of the girl-child to enable her attain high academic achievements.

She noted that over ten thousand girls were enrolled in schools during the first republic's policy of free and compulsory education for all children but only six per cent of them managed to complete the basic education level.

Ms. Jatoe was addressing members of the South Sissala Tertiary Students Association at their annual meeting at Funsi in the Wa East District of the Upper West Region.

She said this development had reduced the number of females who could have occupied high public positions in the nation today.

She noticed that of the 200 members of the association who were at the meeting, only five of them were females and this according to her, was not healthy for gender balance and equity.

She identified teenage pregnancies, early marriages, poverty and the desire to wear fashionable clothes, as the main drivers for the migration of girls to seek greener pastures in the cities and towns which also resulted in the high girl-child school drop out rate.

“Tertiary students had a role to play by inculcating high moral values in themselves to serve as role models to young female students who should avoid “sugar daddies” as their bad influence may impact negatively later on in life”, she stated.

Mr. Jacob Abudu, a retired Assistant Director of Education, said it was baseless to use non availability of facilities to refuse posting to rural areas and therefore urged graduate teachers to accept posting to the District when the proposed Senior High School is eventually established.

He pointed out that most of them were from deprived communities but through hard work they had moved into tertiary institutions and that should motivate them to come back to help their less privileged brothers and sisters.

GNA