The Upper East Regional Examination Coordinator of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Abraham Giba Adoctor says teenage pregnancy has become a fashion among students in pre-tertiary institutions in the country largely due to a policy that allows pregnant girls and teenage mothers to stay in school.
Speaking May 30 in an interview on News Digest on Dreamz FM, Abraham Adoctor said the Re-entry policy, which was introduced to curb school dropouts occasioned by teenage pregnancy, is now contributing to the soaring of the menace.
He stated that some schoolgirls are being influenced by the sight of their colleagues being pregnant or mothers and the preferential treatment they get during the period of gestation or lactation to also have children.
“She sees the colleague having a child, (1:24) and it’s like, ‘oh, if I also have one, I’ll be happy’. Sometimes they make it openly, they comment, ‘oh, if I was having a child, I would have been happy’. Then gradually, that thinking sinks into your head, and you want to have one, and certainly you have one.”
“The policy says when they are pregnant and they are in school, you give them a comfortable place. So some of the girls will also want to be pregnant so that they can get a nice place in the school and not to struggle with their colleagues.”
The Re-entry policy was introduced to keep girls in school as many dropped out because of teenage pregnancy. It is also aimed at adopting measures to curb the menace and facilitate the return of adolescent mothers to school after childbirth.
But after years of its implementation, Abraham Adoctor said it has become a “license” to schoolgirls to get pregnant and thus, contributing to the rise of teenage pregnancy instead of curtailing it.
Aside from this, he argued that it is daunting to combine childbearing and education at that stage of their lives.
He wants government to reverse to the old system where pregnant schoolgirls were sent home and only allowed back after childbirth and lactation.
“While your colleagues are in a lesson, you are running to go and feed the child. So I think they should stay home, take care of the child. When they weaned the child, then they come back to school,” he stated.
“You don’t carry children to school. I know certain quarters will take me on for saying this, but that is the truth. We’ve licensed them and now it is getting worse daily in our schools. It’s getting out of hand. Apart from that, naturally the moral standards in our society is dying.”
