Poor families need incentives to school their children – ILO Advisor
Mr Stephen McClelland, Chief Technical Advisor, International Labour Organisation (ILO), has advocated for incentives for poor families in cocoa growing communities to enroll their children in school to curb child labour.
He said government and other stakeholders in the educational sector should make the educational system attractive to children to make their retention in school a possibility rather than engaging in child labour activities.
Mr McClelland made these observations at the National Stakeholders Validation workshop on ‘Needs Assessment of Community Schools” in Accra on Tuesday.
It was to adapt a training manual from the Ghana Education Service (GES) for School Management Committees (SMC) in 40 Targetted Cocoa Growing Communities.
The report was to map out the ‘real’ educational needs with focus on target schools and SMCs including needs of teachers in four districts and 40 cocoa growing communities.
Mr McClelland said Ghana was late tackling the elimination of child labour looking at the targets set by the country and added that education was the bases for the elimination of child labour.
He expressed that hope that the two documents would contribute to the child labour elimination process.
Mr Osman Mensah, a Research Consultant, noted that some of the findings indicated that school children in targeted communities walked to their schools with an average travel distance of two kilometres.
He said the textbook supply was inadequate in targeted schools while core textbooks to pupil ratio had significantly decreased.
Mr Mensah called on the Ministry of Education and the GES to replenish textbooks, teaching and learning materials requested by the deprived communities to facilitate quality teaching and learning.
“Review the present four-year textbook supply policy to ensure regular distribution of textbook to schools,” he added.
Mr Mensah explained that the training manual for SMCs was to promote basic understanding of child labour and to equip them with skills to perform their role and responsibilities effectively.
Source: GNA