TAMALE: Don’t neglect boy child education - UNICEF

School pupils

The Head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) field office in Tamale, Ms Shaya Ibrahim Asindua, has cautioned against neglect of boy-child education in the country.

According to her, the emphasis on girl-child education, though appropriate, was leading to the neglect of issues promoting boy-child education.

"We are gradually experiencing a situation in some communities where more girls are going to school than boys," she told the Daily Graphic.

She cited the recent statistics on enrolment in the country provided by the Ghana Education Service (GES), which estimate Ghana’s total primary school enrolment for both boys and girls at 83.3 per cent.
While gross enrolment for boys was pegged at 86.2 per cent that of girls was estimated at 80.3 per cent.

However, in the Upper East and Upper West regions, there were more girls in school than boys.

For the Upper East, where school enrolment is 80.4 per cent, gross enrolment for girls is 81.2 per cent, while that of boys is 79.7 per cent.

In the Upper West, gross enrolment for girls is 79.2 per cent and that of boys is 75.6 per cent, while the total enrolment for both sexes is 77.3 per cent.

Consequently, the Upper West and East regions have the highest gender parity rates in the country - 1.05 and 1.02 per cent, respectively - but have the lowest number of boys in school.

This trend, according to Ms Asindua, though good for the girl-child, has some implications for the boy-child.

She admitted that even though it might not be entirely negative, it nonetheless called for thor-ough investigations to understand the factors that might be militating against boy-child education, especially in rural areas.

She noted, for instance, that in some areas in the north, boys dropped out of school early to engage in all forms of employments such as stone quarrying, surface mining and farming, just to earn a living.

"We must identify these issues and address them accordingly before it is too late," she cau-tioned.

The UNICEF field officer entreated stake¬holders in the education sector to remember that even though the focus was on girl-child education, education of the boy-child was equally important if Ghana desired to meet the millennium develop¬ment goals on universal basic education.

The second pillar of the MDGs sets the target for achieving universal primary education by ensuring that by 2015, at least, all boys and girls must complete primary school.

In a related development, the Regional Direc¬tor for West and Central Africa of the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Dr. Gianfranco Rotigliano, has, however, commended Ghana for the progress made in the promotion of girl child education, but suggested that more efforts be made for greater gender parity.

According to him, even though more girls have been enrolled in schools, the situation is not the same for all parts of the country and this calls for greater and sustained efforts by stake¬holders to fill the remaining gap.

Dr Rotigliano said this when he visited the Nanton L/A Primary as part of a working tour of some of the UNICEF intervention communities in the Savelugu/Nanton District of the Northern Region.

He was accompanied by the UNICEF Ghana Country Representative, Dr Yasmin Ali Haque, the Deputy Northern Regional Minister, Mr. Moses Mabingban, and some officials of UNICEF and the district assembly.

The communities visited included Nanton, Tampion, Libiga, Yizegu and Tinkurugu.

The director cited the 2007/08 gender parity index (GPI) conducted by the Education Man-agement Information System (EM1S) of the Ghana Education Service (GES) which estimat¬ed Ghana’s GPI at 0.93.

However, he said the Northern Region had a GPI of 0.84, which was the lowest in the country.

Daily Graphic/DS