That the girl-child in Nyanza is under threat is an understatement. Once again, statistics reveal the continued rot in the education sector in this province, what with alarming rise in teenage pregnancies becoming the norm. And to make it worse, only five girls from Nyanza secured a slot among the top 100 students and only eight scored 'A' in last year's KCSE examination.
One would imagine that since the Minister for Education and his assistant come from this province, this state of affairs would cause them sleepless nights. It should.
One does not need to be told there is something seriously amiss when every week revelations are made of girls dropping out of school due to unplanned pregnancies or early marriages. Stakeholders should be running scared to avert a looming irreversible crisis. Poverty, retrogressive cultural practices and child labour are hindering advancement of girls.
For ten students to get pregnant in one primary school is regrettable, but for four of them to be from the same classroom shows societal neglect for girls and their right to education.
Bare knuckles
Incentives to help the girl-child should be directed at the students themselves since it is the shoe wearer that knows where it pinches most. For long, efforts have been made to improve the education and general wellbeing of girls to attain advanced education, personal development and fulfilled lives, but the negative trend persists.
The problem is national and all concerned should remove their gloves and tackle it with bare knuckles.
Source: The Standard | Online Edition
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