Child Rights International (CRI) has called for an independent school counselling and child protection oversight authority, arguing that the current arrangements under the Ghana Education Service (GES) have failed to deliver results.
The call follows allegations of abuse involving more than 19 female students at Obuasi Senior High Technical School.
Speaking at a press conference, CRI Executive Director Bright Appiah proposed that the GES counselling unit be elevated to an independent authority and that social welfare officers be deployed to basic and secondary schools to strengthen child protection.
He said the GES had established several mechanisms to address child protection concerns but questioned their effectiveness.
“Ghana Education Service have instituted all kinds of committees to deal with matters of child protection in our schools, and we’ve never seen what they’ve done yielding any result so we think that Ghana Education Service cannot be trusted as an institution to deal with child protection issues. So based on that, Child Rights International is calling for the establishment of an independent school counselling and child protection oversight mechanisms in our schools. And what we are saying is that the counselling unit of Ghana Education Service should be elevated to the level of authority to gain that greater independence and authority to enable it to create effectively and to provide oversight and supervision of child welfare and protection matters within our schools.”
Mr Appiah also proposed integrating social welfare officers into schools, saying their training and expertise could help ensure that child protection cases are handled independently and in the best interests of children.
“Again, we are proposing that social welfare should be integrated into our basic and secondary schools in this country because they’ve been trained and they have the skill to be able to manage child protection issues in Ghana just as you go to hospitals and social welfare officers are attached to the hospitals, we want to see that also integrated in our schools so that issues of child protection will be done in a manner that will protect the interests of children so that when investigations are done, we know that it is independent and then we can get the results that we want to get,” he said.
He further urged the GES to review its code of conduct to place greater emphasis on child welfare and protection.
“We are saying that Ghana Education Service needs to review their code of conduct to focus more on the welfare of children and protection of the environment than to deal with teachers’ welfare and then children’s bad behavior towards teachers, instead of correcting the way and manner, students need to have a relationship,” he urged.
