In most West African countries like Ghana, School dropout keep increasing and Government spends a lot of money to campaign on the need for parents to send their wards to school.
The following are some of the causes of the causes of school dropout in the Kwahu West municipality.
Lack of parental care: Some parents don’t have time for their children. They always devote much time seeing to the growth of their businesses than their children. For instance, most parents wake up early in the morning and go to work instead of seeing to it that their children go to school first. This has resulted in most of the youth been dropped out of School.
Inadequate financial support: In Ghana and most of the West African countries, poverty rate is very high as compared to the developed countries like the US and UK and the rest with less poverty rate. Due to this some parents find it difficult to finance their children Education like paying school fees, buying of books, School and so on, making the Children unhappy to stay in school hence school dropout.
Peer Pressure: This I where some school children engage or find themselves in some groups or bad groups which at the long run result in their dropout from school. These peer pressure groups sometimes lure them into social vices like Drinking, Stealing, Smoking, prostitution etc. The repercussions for these sometimes include imprisonment, teenage pregnancy and many others. This also impedes their education.
Broken Homes: This is where marriages come to an abrupt end as a result of disagreement or misunderstanding between couples. This results in separation of the couple, hence a child finds it difficult as to which parent to attend to when in need of an Educational support (paying of school fees and other educational materials). When this happens, the affected children fail to get the needed parental care. The children may also resort to bad attitudes such as prostitution in order to earn a living hence teenage pregnancy. This will in the long run affect the children since they’ll be dropped out of their various schools.
Family Planning: Lack of education by health care officials on the use of contraceptives has led to increase in number of children been born. When this happens, parents become unable to take good care of all their children especially in taking them to school and this brings about some of the children remaining in the house.
Polygamy: This is where a man marries more than one wife and this happens, all the wives will probably give birth raising the procreation level in the family with little resource to take care of them. The resultant problem will be school dropout.
Desire for money: A society where children have a strong desire in getting money, there will be an increase in school dropout. Some children’s desire for money makes them venture into occult groups and engage in social vices like killing, stealing, drug trafficking etc. Some also engage in trading activities like buying and selling hence school dropouts.
Environmental Influence: In environment where most parents are jobless compel children to engage in activities that will fetch them money in support of their parents hence they end up been dropped out of School. For instance, most children are into illegal mining popularly known as “Galamsey” making money every day so they are not enticed to go school again hence increase in school dropout.
Beatrice Gyamfuah
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