Stakeholders in education have identified the unavailability and inaccessibility of data as a challenge in the implementation of strategies and interventions for promoting girls’ education in Ghana. They said the effectiveness of such strategies depended on data and that the inability to assess the interventions were because they were often subsumed or part of larger interventions. The stakeholders said the inaccessibility of data was a bane to the promotion of girls’ education in Ghana and that the phenomenon needed to be tackled with some urgency. A scoping review on strategies for promoting girl’s education in Ghana has also identified that data is hardly disaggregated by gender, geographical location, and school level particularly the primary and secondary levels. Dr Ernestina Tetteh, Projects Manager, STAR-Ghana Foundation (SGF), speaking at a day’s Forum on Girl’s Education in Ghana, confirmed that data on girls’ education was scarce and for those that were available, accessibility was a major challenge. The forum, under the theme: ‘Increasing Inclusive Access to Continuous Quality Education for Girls’, sought to build consensus among stakeholders and renew commitment towards collaborations on strategies to secure girls’ continuous access to quality education. It was organised by STAR-Ghana Foundation and partners under the Gender Rights and Empowerment Programme (G-REP) with funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK government. Dr Tetteh said: ‘Gender disaggregated data is key to monitoring how policies and strategies should be operationalised but also how such policies are working for both boys and girls and the particular intervention to provide for girls.’ The Project Manager said the lack of accurate data and systematic documentation of learnings and lessons made it difficult to access strategies, calling for renewed collaboration by stakeholders to nip the phenomenon in the bud. Dr Esther Ofei Aboagye, Chairperson, STAR-Ghana Foundation, observed that there was a lot of work to be done in the promotion of girls’ education and that some of the factors affecting girl’s education, including sexual harassment needed to be dealt with. She said collaboration and effective coordination, vertical and horizontal, was important at the community level to inform policy delivery, assuring that Civil Society Organisations were open to such collaboration to ensure ‘a Ghana fit for purpose’. Mr Kofi Asare, Executive Director, Africa Education Watch, said expanding equitable access to education required that the larger issue of infrastructural development in line with the growth of the population and the growing number of schools still operating under trees and dilapidated structures were critically considered. Speaking on the low budgetary allocation for specified interventions that benefit girls’ education in Ghana, he said there was the need for specific action towards financing equitable and inclusive education in Ghana. For instance, until 2020, complementary education was solely donor funded. However, in the 2023 budget, an allocation of GHS2.1 million Ghana Cedis has been made for complimentary education. The Ministry of Education’s Strategic Plan for 2018-2030 commits only one per cent of its Basic Education Budget to supporting the Complementary Basic Education programme. Ms. Eunice R. Agbenyadzi, Head of Programmes, SGF, said there was also a need to strengthen the collective advocacy on budgets for the education sector, particularly those targeted at girls. Ms. Clara Osei-Boateng, a representative from FCDO of the UK Government, said educating girls was the single solution to many of the problem women faced in their adulthood, reiterating that ‘when girls are educated, they are able to secure jobs and become economically empowered, which enables them to take control of their lives.’ She said while Ghana had achieved gender parity in enrolment in basic schools, many girls continued to face challenges, which affected their retention in school.
Source: Ghana News Agency
