Towards Inclusive and Equitable Education: Reforming Ghana’s Re-entry policy

Abstract

Low inclusivity and inequitable access to education in Ghana has led to limited opportunities for schoolgirls, high cases of pregnant girls and a consequent increase in girls dropping out of school. Using Ghana’s re-entry policy as a tool, the project aims to mobilise discussions on structural patriarchy within culture and power relations that exist to normalize and naturalize socially encoded roles that disadvantage girls, and how these may be reinforced in the school space, in addition to how Ghana’s political settlement contributes to inefficient educational and equality legislation.

The project is designed to engage at the policy, community, and school space. This is due to the fact that, despite these spaces being independent structures, work at the identified spaces feeds into each other. The project aims to transform the identified spaces towards the achievement of equal worth, dignity, and development of schoolgirls, through the facilitation and development of an equality plan as part of the re-entry policy at the policy level, the establishment of gender and equality councils, and the development of a gender responsive pedagogy at the school level which will consequently interrogate the status quo i.e., patriarchal structures at the community level.