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SHS girls return to school with pregnancy and engagement rings
It has come to light that teenage pregnancy among students in both Basic and Senior High Schools in the Eastern region of Ghana has increased to an alarming level.
SHS girls return to school with pregnancy and engagement rings
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Headmistress of Kwahu Nkwatia Presbyterian Senior High School, Mrs. Cythia Anim is reported as having revealed the worrying situation at a meeting in Koforidua.
The meeting was organised by the Girls Education Network formed by Plan International Ghana as part of the commemoration of the Day of the African Child marked on June 16 every year.
“Some female students returned to school pregnant and wearing engagement rings. They got impregnated and were forced into marriage. But the policy says you cannot sack them from the school so I allowed them to stay in school. I only asked them to remove the rings. In all this it will get to a stage they will drop out of school when the belly protrudes,” Mrs. Cythia Anim bemoaned as quoted by Starfm.com.gh.
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“Although there is a policy by GES that the girls should be in school even when they are pregnant. We the heads of Senior high schools are in agreement with that government policy but we realized that the stakeholders have to go back to the drawing board and the government as a whole to review it…because the students are abusing it and doing their own things,” the former Eastern Regional Officer of Girls Education at the Ghana Education Service added.
She blamed the situation largely on the legal age for consent to sex, saying it opens young girls up to exploitation by unscrupulous men.
“Government is saying that a person can go to bed with whoever he chooses at age 16 so if a girl doesn’t start KG early by 16, she is in school and legally free to have sex and at age 18 can even go ahead and marry. So, we have realized that our girls are getting pregnant and they even go and marry and come back to school with their rings on which is of very bad taste because we know at the basic level a girl should not be pregnant and marry if for anything at all it should be tertiary but with this clause where lie the power of school authorities to question girls who come to school with their wedding and engagement rings?” Mrs. Cythia Anim quizzed.
A total of 109,888 adolescent girls were impregnated in 2020 in Ghana. Out of the number 2,865 were between 10 and 14 years while those with ages between 15 and 19 years were 107,023.
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The Eastern Region recorded the second-highest numbers in teenage pregnancy.
The Eastern Regional Girls Education Officer at the Ghana Education Service Patricia Birago who was also present at the meeting agreed to calls for the amendment of the law on consent to sex.
According to her, reports from the various Senior High Schools on teenage pregnancy among students are scary.
The consent to sex law amendment advocacy made sense to the New Juaben North Director of the National Commission for Civic Education, NCCE, Ebenezer Acheampong in the face of the worrying trend.
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