Female students face a number of challenges that make it impossible for them to stay and perform in school. According to the Director General of the Ghana Education Service, Ms Benedicta Naana Biney, the gender gap in education is caused by a number of factors which often work together to compound the difficulties girls face at school.
She cited the burden of domestic task or paid work, which weighs more heavily on girls, adding that certain cultural attitudes such as early marriage and taboos created barriers to girls attending school.
Some of them are subjected to harassment or violence in the school environment that makes such schools “unfriendly” for them. Apart from this, is the issue of lack of female role models to mentor the girl child to aspire for higher academic laurels.
“They can also be hindered by other factors such as teenage pregnancy, harassment at school, or poverty preventing them from getting access to the basic needs of their education,” she said.
Ms Biney made this known in a speech read on her behalf at the opening ceremony of the first Girls Education Officers (GEOs) National Forum in Accra on Monday.
The forum was put together by the Ministry of Education (MOE), in collaboration with Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) Ghana and the Department for International Development (DFID).
The three-day forum, which brought together all 236 district, municipal, metropolitan and regional Girls Education Officers, was on the theme, “Meeting the Challenges in Girls Education through Networking.”
It was aimed at providing an opportunity for the education officers to share ideas about the best processes for addressing girls’ education challenges, as well as presenting a unique chance to network with one another and build relationships.
On educational performance, Ms Biney said the proportion of girls to the proportion of boys enrolled in basic schools increased from 0.93 per cent between 2003 and 2004 to 0.97 per cent in 2011 and 2012 for the primary level. The increase in girls’ enrolment at the junior high school level had also increased from 0.88 to 0.94 per cent over the last 10 years.
“However, much remains to be done as there are still fewer girls in school than boys with girls less likely to enrol and more likely to fail to complete the basic level of education than boys, and to drop out before writing their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE),” she said.
Also at the senior high and tertiary level of education, girls are much less well-represented, with just 87 girls in senior high school (SHS) for every 100 boys.
Furthermore, the performance of girls in the BECE also falls slightly behind in three of the four core subjects, indicating that the proportion of girls achieving an aggregate of 6 to 30 in 2012 was 58 per cent compared to 61 per cent for boys.
She said at the West African School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) level, boys performed better than girls in all four core subjects.
She, therefore, encouraged the participants to take advantage of the opportunity provided to network and see how best they could help resolve the issues hindering the education of the girl child.
In her welcome address, the Director of the Girls Education Unit of the GES, Madam Matilda Bannerman-Mensah, said the GEOs constituted a huge human resource at the forefront of the national endeavour to eradicate poverty and inequality through education.
“They have not only been working to send more girls to school and to retrain them, they have also been helping to develop their confidence and self-esteem,” she said.
However, she said, in spite of how far the GEOs had come, there was still more to be done as they received a lot of capacity building but were restrained by the lack of resources to carry out their duties.
Giving her address, the Special Programmes Manager of African Women Development Fund (AWDF), Madam Abigail Burgesson, urged the GEOs to work with enthusiasm even with the little resources available.
The Executive Director of CAMFED Ghana, Madam Delores Dickson, pledged the organisation’s support in fighting for the rights of girls in all endeavours.
By zainabu Issah
Newer news items:
Older news items:
Comments
Visit site:
Gender gap in education: Looking at the factors