Child Protection in Boarding Schools in Ghana. Prospera Dzang-Tedam
retained on all aspects of the project and that utmost confidentiality was maintained.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to our families and friends in the UK, Ghana and around the world for their inspiration, support and encouragement during the setting up and running of the project.
To the girls in the Project school, the Headmistress, and the staff who enabled the pilot project to succeed, we are eternally grateful for your role in making this book a reality.
The authors pledge their ongoing support for the project through the proceeds from this book.
Our Journey and Commitment
We have known each other for over 20 years, having first met at the University of Ghana, Legon where we both studied and achieved a BA (Hons) in Social Work. Our friendship developed and has been sustained over the years because of our similar interests around not only protecting children from harm, but also actively working to ensure children’s needs are understood. Despite living and working in different countries we have always been in regular contact and have both pursued careers in the area of social work.
As social workers, we believe in the need to support, advise and guide families to be better able to bring up their children in environments free from all forms of abuse and neglect. As academic researchers, we feel able to achieve this through disseminating our findings and sharing the experience gained from our pilot project.
Our book, ‘Child Protection in Boarding Schools in Ghana: Contemporary Issues, Challenges and Opportunities’ invites readers to carefully consider ways in which we currently work with children and young people in boarding schools and proffers new ways of working with them to ensure their best interests are met and maintained throughout the course of their studies.
This is not an attempt to blame or criticise any profession or any individuals, institutions, organisations or agencies. Instead, it represents an attempt to contribute to finding robust and lasting solutions to some of the socio-cultural challenges which may exist in Ghanaian boarding schools and are faced by secondary school-aged children on a regular basis. Our vision is to be a part of the solution by prompting dialogue among key stakeholders, policy and decision-makers.
Of significance to us are the findings of a number of reports which identify Ghana as lacking in robust child protection policies. For example, the fourth MDG progress report (2008 MDG Report) in September 2010 identified the need for improved child protection services across various sectors in Ghana. Additionally, the 2015 MDG Report acknowledged the slow pace of gender equity in access to secondary school with the update of female children still being problematic (MDG 2015).
What qualifies us to write a book on child protection in boarding schools?
Protecting children should be high on every Ghanaian citizen’s agenda, however, we recognise that more often than not, this responsibility is abrogated to professionals such as social workers, police, development officers, gender and child-rights advocates, teachers, nurses, doctors and others. Whilst we write this book from our positions as child protection and child welfare experts, we bring to bear our own childhood experiences of boarding school in Ghana. We have memories of the sorts of treatment and behaviours we approved of and the ones that left us in despair, fear and anxiety. There are also the experiences which left us traumatised and which we have avoided having to reflect on until now. For example,
One of the authors was in a boarding school which had its farms. Students were the ‘farm hands’ and produce from the farm was used by the school kitchen to feed students. The farm was many miles away from the school and often the journey there would occur on foot, and students would have to take their hoes, machetes and other relevant farming implements with them. On one such occasion, a number of students were being transported in the trailer of a tractor which unfortunately was involved in an accident. Some students sustained injuries and were taken to the local hospital. My vivid recollection of the doctor in charge repeatedly saying, ‘no injury, no medicine’ is one that will forever remain ingrained with me. The author is aware of one peer, who till this day continues to experience pain in her arm, requiring regular medical intervention Intervention to address the emotional and psychological trauma was absent.
Secondly, as parents of children who are currently in secondary schools, we explore with them their experiences of their schools and aim to understand whether these are similar or different to ours. Discussions with our own children reveal some of the less desirable situations as still present in their experiences today. Needless to say, there have been improvements in many areas of boarding school provision in Ghana, however, there are always opportunities to develop and improve on some processes to ensure that children experience a safe, nurturing and healthy boarding life. It is our hope that our children will have a better experience than we had nearly 30 years ago.
Our knowledge of child development, the need to ensure safety, consistency, warmth and appropriate boundaries for children in all circumstances and situations has further encouraged us to share our knowledge through this book.
Finally, the dearth of research and literature about child protection in Ghanaian boarding schools and the experiences of children in boarding schools in Ghana generally, reinforced our desire to contribute to knowledge in this area. The well-being of children who are educated in boarding provision across the country requires attention and significant reform.
We wish to acknowledge that there is a growing area of private and/ or international secondary schools, a few of which have boarding provision. Whilst they may already have child protection systems and processes in place and may not identify with the issues being addressed in this book, it remains crucial that a more balanced and equitable approach is taken by the relevant authorities to ensure good practice in child protection in boarding schools, regardless of whether these are public (government funded) schools or private schools.
In Ghana, according to Heyneman and Stern (2014), parents perceived private schools to be of higher quality than public/government-run schools. Parents cited an ongoing lack of commitment on the part of public school teachers, resulting in high levels of absenteeism as one of the main reasons for the preference of private schools. In addition, parents commented on overcrowded classrooms and poorer national examination results as discouraging them from considering public secondary schools for their children.
So, who is this book for?
This book has a multi-audience focus, in that it is recommended for a wide range of people and professionals – parents and carers, headteachers, teachers, tutors, policy makers, researchers and others interested in the well-being of children in temporary or permanent care outside the family environment.
This book is intended for anyone who is interested in understanding child protection in the Ghanaian context and more specifically within boarding school provision
We recognise the need for a resource that consolidates information which is relevant, contemporary and useful to the governing structures of boarding secondary schools in Ghana, with the hope that some of the ideas and concepts will generate debate and result in systemic changes.
The intention is to ensure that the messages contained in this book reach as many people as possible; consequently, it is written in a way that is accessible to a wide audience. From an academic perspective, this book is a product of a widely-researched and evaluated project, grounded in evidence through the use of secondary sources, references and citations. This makes it a useful resource for NGO’s, Government Departments, researchers and other people engaged in academic study who wish to cite this.
UNICEF, in conjunction with other NGOs undertook a pilot study when they recognised the need to develop a more African-specific conceptual framework for child protection systems work that includes non-formal systems, as well as to begin to build an evidence base on African experiences.
It is hoped that this book will go some way to ultimately provide national stakeholders with an even more critical view of their existing child protection systems in the context of boarding schools but also applicable more widely to other forms of