Formalise gender transformative education initiatives to sustain gains – Oxfam

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The Head of Programmes and Campaigns, Oxfam Ghana, Mohammed-Anwar Sadat Adam, has iterated the need for the government, through the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ghana Education Service (GES), to formalise some of the result-driven transformative initiatives developed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development partners into policy to sustain the gains.

According to him, Oxfam introduced Gender Transformative Education (GTE) to create an education system that addresses the diverse needs of people, especially young women, girls and physically challenged persons, with projects such as the complimentary basic education and the Girls’ Model Junior High School.

With the project yielding results beyond expectations, he touched on the need to formalise such policies to ensure nation-wide implementation

He added that the establishment of the Complimentary Education Agency (CEA) by the GES to champion the ‘Complementary Basic Education programme’ is a step in the right direction, and it was his hope that it will soon become part of education policy. However, similar steps must be taken to formalise and sustain other initiatives implemented by CSOs and NGOs that are innovative and solve problems in the space.

“We have been able to work together with other members as an alliance on the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme, and now we have been able to get the government to establish the CEA; so we have a sector to focus on that area, we still have a lot of work to do in that area, and we are hoping that government will integrate that into our policy. We also want to make sure that there are resources allocated to that sector.

“In the Girls’ Junior High School programme, the model has been tested with a pilot in two districts, and is now operational in over 60 districts in Ghana; so we are also supporting districts interested in replicating the model with technical advice on how to replicate it across the country. As an NGO we do not have the resources to do all that and so we hope government will take it up to deal with the issue of gender equity across the education system,” he said.

The GTE initiative has been focused on creating awareness and raising the consciousness of people about the need to address gender limitations in the education system. It also acts as a framework to deal with social norm change, especially the beliefs and attitudes that are discriminatory against girls and persons with disability – in terms of access.

He made these remarks on the sideline of the ‘Education Out Loud’ sub-regional conference. The conference brought together 26 CSOs from 20 West and Central African countries to give a continental perspective of their experiences and ways to strengthen civil society engagement in gender-responsive education planning, policy dialogue and monitoring.

‘Education Out Loud’ is an initiative that supports the education sector civil society organisations (CSOs) through funding assistance to promote transparency and accountability in the education sector.

Acting Regional Programme Manager, Education Out Loud, West and Central Africa, Dorte Jorgensen, stated that her outfit is working to finance educational CSOs to hold governments and decision-makers responsible and accountable to deliver free quality transformative education for all.

She emphasised that the focus of the conference is to bring all grantees in the over 20 African countries to share best practices and result-driven models, and how to collaborate between countries to learn from one another.

“In Ghana, for instance, there are many good policies on education but implementation has been a challenge, and so we have groups to ensure social accountability mechanisms are working. So, there is an established CSO that is monitoring budget implementation community impact, among others,” she said.

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