Getting truant children back to school – the Adansi North initiative

By Alhaji Kofi Mensah

KWAME, a very brilliant boy in class six, has suddenly not been reporting for school. However, early in the morning he dresses up for school, collects his dues from the parents, but ends up joining his new friends on the highways filling pot-holes with sand for coins from drivers.

His friends are equally academically good pupils and Junior High School students who have started playing truancy for some time now, and are gradually becoming drop-outs 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 satchet ice-water on the streets.

town and cities

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 hire 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 periods, while other parents engage them on the farms, at the market, and other family businesses.

An effect of absenteeism, leading to truancy and eventual drop-out from school, is not healthy for the development of any society.

One needs to do no research before he or she can conclude that truant children are at risk in society, as they are susceptible to all manners of dangers, including drugs, alcoholism, crime commitment and casual sex, leading to teenage pregnancies, and the contracting of sexually-related diseases.

It is against this background that the initiative of the Adansi North District Education Directorate, aimed at getting truants and other children back to the classroom, so that the issue of truancy and school drop-outs will be a thing of the past in the district, is highly innovative and commendable.

Known as the “TRUANCY FREE ZONE INITIATIVE”, the idea is not only designed to get children into the classrooms, 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).

In addition, the initiative expects to galvanise key stakeholders like Nananom, the district assembly, parents, religious groups, teachers and the general public to play their expected roles towards improving school attendance in the district.

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 Junior High School (JHS) level, perhaps necessitated the birth of the truancy-free zone initiative.

Mr. George Adjei-Henne, the District Director of Education and the 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 enrollment rate for the JHS.

“It stands at 70 per cent, which is far below the national rate. This means that 70 per cent of children between 12-14 years in the district are in school, and the remaining 30 per cent are out of school.”

According to the District Director, absenteeism also played a major challenge to the efforts of the Directorate to improve performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (B.E.C.E) level. “Quite a big percentage of our candidates stay away from school after registration, only to re-surface during the examination period.

“Last year, for instance, we got only 61 per cent of our registered candidates to write our district mock exams. In the final examination itself, 37 did not turn up at all to write the papers.”

To make the initiative succeed by way of achieving its objective, the Directorate initiated a number of visits to solicit support for the project.

Areas contacted included the Adansi Traditional Council, Senior High schools in the district, and the Akrokerri College of Education.

In addition, forty churches were visited, whilst seven community meetings were organised to explain the rationale behind the initiative, and seek total community support and ownership.

An in-depth presentation on the initiative was also made during the District Assembly’s general meeting. Five neatly-designed bill-boards with the inscription “ADANSI NORTH DISTRICT -TRUANCY FREE ZONE” have been erected at strategic and entry points of the district, to regularly remind the people of their responsibilities to making the initiative work.

“We also want to get the opportunity to reach out to all unit committee members in the district, to sensitize them on the need to have truancy watch schemes in their areas of operation.

It is our hope that the assembly will again support us in this direction. For a programme of this nature to succeed, public education is very crucial.

“We therefore wish to appeal to individuals and organisations, to support us to intermittently engage the services of mobile vans and communication centres to disseminate information on it to the public,” Mr. Adjei-Henne stressed.

“Indeed, it is paramount for all stakeholders in education in the district to own the initiative and work towards ensuring its success. This, is because, the district needs a knowledgeably vibrant human resource base to help in achieving its development agenda. The level of absenteeism and truancy will not in anyway help the district.”

“I am really thrilled by the deep involvement of the District Assembly in this initiative,” says Mr. J. K. Onyinah, the Ashanti Regional Director of Education.

According to him, the swift manner the assembly came out with a bye-law to support the idea behind the initiative was worth appreciating.

bye-law

The assembly has passed a Juvenile Delinquency bye-law that takes effect on the day of the launch, to check truancy and other child-related acts and behaviours that prevent them from going to school. Part of the provisions of the bye-law makes operations of table tennis games, hiring and learning bicycle riding during school hours an offence.

The Regional Director indicated that parents and guardians had crucial roles to play in order to keep their children in school. “Quality education can be achieved if parents and guardians encourage and motivate their wards to go to school.”

Apart from financial support and the passing out of the bye-law, Alhaji Lateef Majduob, the District Chief Executive (DCE), sent out a distress call to all who matter in the academic performance of the district, saying, “the rate of failures and poor performance at the lower level of education, especially at the primary school level, has hit alarming proportions, as a result of the high level of truancy and absenteeism among school children in the district.

“Therefore improving the educational standard in this district is not an individual affair, but a collective one. It behoves all of us to contribute our quota to the success of this initiative, and every programme aimed at enhancing education in the area.”

It is the thinking of the writer that the success of the initiative would also depend upon the pupils and students themselves. Their will to develop a new interest for school and learning will be an essential ingredient that will stimulate school attendance and performance.

It is therefore refreshing when the Regional Director stressed, “As young learners, I advise you to take your studies seriously, and desist from all forms of indiscipline, such as drug abuse, use of unacceptable language, hooliganism, truancy, peer group influence, sexual immorality, patronage of video centres, and other vices that tend to affect schooling.”

Interestingly, the strategic word linked to the truancy-free initiative is CHALLENGE. The Education Directorate expects that everybody in the district, including the children, need to help by challenging school-age children found playing truancy or loitering around during class hours. But, quickly cautioned, “Do not let us fight them or rebuke them, for if our children become wayward, the entire community suffers.”

However, the challenge to headteachers and teachers to help realise the initiative’s goals is more critical than everything. This is because, inside the school, the responsibility lies on them to make the child have the interest and love to come to school the next day.

Susan Hallam’s book on ‘improving school attendance’ states: A school drop-out 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”.

In the view of the writer, the District Director’s inference should sit up education stakeholders in the country, including the government, since absenteeism, truancy and school drop-outs are common in the districts.

It is therefore relevant that all should help make the Adansi North Initiative succeed, so that the idea could be duplicated in other districts to help get the majority of Ghanaian children in school, and also retained for the betterment of the nation.

The writer is the PRO for the Obuasi Municipal Education Directorate

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