Child Rights International (CRI), a child rights advocacy organization, has stated that the Ghana Education Service (GES) has failed woefully to protect children, minors, and students in general from abuse within schools.
The Executive Director of CRI, Bright Appiah, asserted that the historical conduct of the GES demonstrates a lack of commitment to the welfare of children.
Speaking in an interview on Nyankonton Mu Nsem on Rainbow Radio 87.5FM, he noted that the recent sexual assault allegations against the Headmaster of Obuasi Senior High Technical School (SHTS) have exposed deep-seated inefficiencies in how the service handles such cases.
He stressed that without the exposé by investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni, the matter would likely have been swept under the carpet.
He lamented that individuals accused of such offences are typically transferred, reassigned, or interdicted without further legal or disciplinary action.
“Without the investigative piece by our brother, this matter would have ended only with interdiction. If you examine past cases of sexual misconduct and how they were handled, the suspects are either transferred, reassigned to different schools, or interdicted, and that ends it. So we can confidently state that their behavior does not suggest that the GES can handle the matter when our children are abused.”
Mr. Appiah underscored the urgent need to strengthen the current referral system and integrate social welfare officers directly into basic and secondary schools to offer professional child protection support.
He further advocated for the establishment of an independent body to supervise the GES and ensure that children’s rights are strictly protected.
“GES has failed for years, and we should no longer trust them to protect our children. That is why we proposed at our press conference the need for the Counselling Unit of the Ghana Education Service to be elevated to an authority to enable it to provide oversight and supervision of child welfare and protection matters in schools. The GES cannot protect our children. They are only good at teaching and managing our schools, so we have to give the handling of welfare issues to an independent body.”
He concluded by reiterating that elevating the counselling unit into an independent authority would grant it the necessary autonomy to efficiently address child welfare and protection across all pre-tertiary institutions in the country.
By:;Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
