His friends are equally academically good pupils and junior high school (JHS) students who have started playing truancy for some time now and are gradually becoming dropouts from school. Apart from the filling of the potholes, there are other activities that engage them such as collecting snails from the bush, picking of oranges and palm fruits from the farms and the selling of ice water on the streets. In the town and cities, a shift system becomes the societal evil that has influenced most pupils and students to become truant children. These people hide behind the reasons of being either in the morning or afternoon shift to play video games and to hire and ride bicycles during school hours. In the Adansi North District, parental influences have become another cause of pupils’ absenteeism, as some parents engage their children to look after their younger siblings during school period while other parents engage them on the farms, at the market and on other family businesses. Effects of absenteeism leading to truancy and eventual dropout from school are not healthy for the development of any society.
One needs no research before he or she can conclude that truant children are at risk in the society as they are susceptible to all manner of dangers including drugs and alcoholism and their related crimes and casual sex, leading to teenage pregnancies and contracting of sexually related diseases. It is against this background that the initiative of the Adansi North District Education Directorate aimed at getting truant and other children in the classroom to make the issue of truancy and school dropout a thing of the past in the district is highly innovative and commendable. Known as “Truancy Free Zone Initiative”, the idea is not only designed to get children in the classroom but to educate the communities to get deeply involved in the management of schools through their Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) and the School Management Committees (SMCs). A survey conducted in five out of the seven educational circuits in the district, which revealed a frightening absentee percentage of approximately 20 per cent and the gross enrolment rate of 70 per cent at the JHS level, perhaps necessitated the birth of the Truancy Free Zone Initiative. Mr George Adjei-Henne, District Director of Education and brainchild of the initiative, at its launch at Fomena, threw more light on the out-of-school situation in the district when he said “another frightening indicator is the gross enrolment rate for the JHS. It stands at 70 per cent, which is far below the national rate”. In addition, 40 churches were visited whilst seven community meetings were organised to explain the rationale behind the initiative Susan Hallam’s book on ‘Improving school attendance’ states “A school dropout is a potential criminal”, and if that assertion is true, says Mr Adjei –Henne, then the situation in the Adansi North is “a security threat”. It is therefore relevant that all contribute to make the Adansi North Initiative succeed so that the idea could be duplicated in other districts to help get majority of Ghanaian children in school and retained for the growth of the nation. |
