The National coordinator of the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), Leslie Tettey has called on government and all stakeholders in the education sector to pay critical attention to issues concerning women and girls’ education in the country. With females constituting 51% of Ghana’s population, Leslie Tettey says “The interests, peculiar needs and contributions of this important segment of our population (females) should therefore not be overlooked.” “Education is a key component and requirement for achieving national development and prosperity and no nation will realize its development aspirations without the provision of quality education on equitable basis for all its citizens.” He added. He made these admonitions at the launch of this year’s Global Action Week (GAW) celebrations in Accra. Present at the launch were heads and representatives of Civil Society Organizations in Educations in Ghana. The global theme for the week, which begins from the 2nd to 8th of May 2011 is on the theme: “Women and Girls Education”, while The theme for the celebration in Ghana is “Women and Girls Education: It’s a Right, Make it work”. This theme, according to the National Coordinator of GNECC “was chosen to emphasize the rights of women and girls to education, which is also key to national development.” The Global Action Week (GAW) is an initiative of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) to network with other organizations worldwide and advocate for quality education. The GCE has therefore set aside the first week of the month of May annually to highlight pertinent issues in the education sector for public knowledge and engage governments on measures to address these issues. The Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition, GNECC, is the lead agency in organizing the Global Action Week 2011 in Ghana in partnership with other CSOs interested in promoting access to quality basic education in Ghana. While commending government and other Civil society groups in the country for their contribution towards girl child education in Ghana, Leslie Tettey noted that “there are still serious challenges with girls’ education in the country. Gender parity gaps widen in favour of boys as we progress to higher grades of basic education and worsen at the secondary and tertiary levels. Performance of boys at the BECE has remained consistently better than that of the girls and there are still numerous socio-economic and socio-cultural factors that are inimical to the attainment of girls education at all levels.” “Activities during the week will aim at pressurizing government to put in place measures to ensure that policies and provisions ratified over the years in the interest of girls are functioning and effectively being implemented. Awareness will also be created about girls and women’s education and need for all – individuals and institutions -to work together towards ensuring that the rights of girls and women to quality education are made to work in Ghana” He said Key issues of focus for advocacy during GAW 2011 include the need for:

• A comprehensive policy on gender for the education sector
• Gender-sensitive school curricula and ensuring that teachers are trained and supported to deliver these
• Provision of incentives for women teachers to enter the profession so that we can have more role models for girls
• Making schools safe for girls and agreeing appropriate sanctions to tackle harassment of girls in schools by teachers, fellow pupils and others
• Implementation of the Benchmark on Adult Literacy which calls for 3% of national education budget to be invested in adult literacy programmes with special emphasis on women.

The week will take off from Tuesday, May 2 and will involve activities such as

• Route march
• Radio and TV discussions
• TV Documentary
• National Durbar

Source: Citifmonline.com