By Mustapha Sesay
Civil society organizations, local and international nongovernmental organizations have called on the authorities to reverse their decision after government refused to allow pregnant girls take the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and attend regular schools.
In a joint press release of Wednesday 6 May, a group of NGOs expressed concerns about the education ministry’s decision that effectively prevented pregnant girls from attending schools and taking public exams.
The groups include Action Aid, Save the Children, IBIS, Plan, Concern Worldwide, International Rescue Committee (IRC), Education for all Sierra Leone coalition and Community Action to Restore Lives (CARL).
A representative from Global Education Advocate, an international nongovernmental organization based in America, Chernor Bah, described the policy as not only “discriminative but also destructive”. He said his organization had engaged in a series of advocacy for the decision to be reversed, to no avail. He noted that the authorities’ effort should have focused more on finding ways to keep the pregnant girls in schools rather than throwing them out of schools.
It was estimated that over 3,000 girls, who were supposed to sit to the BECE, got pregnant before the exam commenced.
Bah feared that those girls would not have the chance to continue with their schooling and would hence become dropouts and illiterate mothers.
For that reason he said they were calling on government to rethink and reverse its decision as far as the girls were concerned, noting that government policies should not be based on moral principles because everybody faults those principles at some point in time.
The press release pointed out that the government owed an obligation to secure and protect all girls’ right to continue education, “including those who have become pregnant.”
It recognized the fact that though some part of society frowned at the idea of pregnant girls going to school, it should be noted that that it was their right to be in school.
Save the Children’s Director of Programmes, Claire Bader, said they were committed to helping combat the menace of teenage pregnancy and protect girls as they were gravely concerned about the increased number of teenage pregnancies across the country.
© Politico 07/05/15
