Boys prefer corporal punishment in schools – Survey
A survey conducted by ActionAid Ghana, has revealed that seven out of eight boys are of the view that corporal punishment such as caning, kneeling, pulling one’s ear, weeding and digging pits are necessary for the training of the child but girls resent corporal punishment.
More than a quarter of the girls interviewed said they would absent themselves from school because of the fear of punishment.
Madam Gifty Baka, the National Project Manager of Stop Violence Against Girls in School (SVAGS) said this on Monday during the opening of a five-day Regional Girls’ Camp at Bimbilla.
The camp began with a procession through the main roads of Bimbilla to encourage more parents to send their girl-child to school and attracted 130 girls from 13 schools.
It was under the theme; “Empowering girls through education, the role of ICT” and was aimed at deepening the awareness of the participants and to build their self confidence and assertiveness to resist all forms of abuses against them.
Madam Baka, who was commenting on a baseline survey conducted by the NGO in 2009 in collaboration with Songtaba, said positions boys hold where they were served at home by girls and women make them to behave with bloated self-image and this is transferred to schools resulting in boys bullying girls.
She said girls were vulnerable to sexual abuses in the school and communities by fellow school boys and male youngsters adding that girls are disciplined or punished for reporting an adult member of the community or a relative who has physically or sexually abused her.
Madam Baka said there seemed to be an improvement within the three years of the implementation of the SVAGS project where a larger number of both girls and boys are able to report abuses to the appropriate agencies for redress.
She said Songtaba and ActionAid had taken the lead to empower girls through girls’ camps and clubs which support their promotion and accountability in school, training of 26 mentors to support the clubs all geared toward the interest of the girls.
Mrs. Adam Lamnatu, Programme Coordinator of Songtaba, said there was an increase in teenage pregnancy and child marriages in the Nanumba North and Nanumba South districts before the implementation of the SVAGS adding that such cases had reduced.
Source: GNA