The Principal Manager of Policy Planning, Project Research, Monitoring and Evaluation (PPPRME) at the Commission for TVET, Hannah Okyere, has observed that poor sanitation facilities for girls, safety concerns, and a lack of mentorship in TVET institutions directly affect the retention and completion of female learners.
She noted that only about 36 per cent of females were enrolled in TVET, with less than 20 per cent participating in engineering and other technical fields.
Ms Okyere explained that women were concentrated in low-income trades such as dressmaking, catering, and hairdressing, while men dominated fields like welding, electrical work, construction, and engineering.
The forum
She was speaking at the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) Ghana Chapter stakeholders’ forum to advance the adoption of its Gender Responsive Pedagogy for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (GRP4TVET) Model.
The initiative was in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, as part of Phase II of its STEM education programme, which aimed to equip marginalised and disadvantaged students across the country.
It is designed to strengthen inclusivity in Ghana’s TVET system by addressing long-standing gender disparities that limit the participation and performance of young women in technical fields.
Gaps not accidental
Ms Okyere highlighted that those gender gaps were not accidental, as they were driven by system challenges, including cultural norms and stereotypes, weak gender policy implementation, lack of gender-sensitive infrastructure, limited female instructors and role models and inadequate gender-responsive teaching methods.
To address those gender gaps, she stressed the need to strengthen gender policies, promote female participation in non-traditional trades, improve infrastructure, build the capacity of facilitators and use gender-disaggregated data.
Rationale
In a presentation, the Programmes Officer, FAWE Ghana, Dora Mochiah, said a responsive model was developed by the FAWE in 2005 to create gender-responsive teaching and learning environments in African schools.
She added that it was synthesised from the best practices of recently developed and implemented gender-responsive pedagogy toolkits, including those from Ethiopia, Uganda, and Rwanda.
Ms Mochiah added that it focused on training teachers to understand and address the specific needs of both girls and boys, taking into consideration inclusion to enhance student participation and performance.
The Principal Programmes Officer for Inclusive Education, also the Gender Desk Officer at the Ministry of Education, Wilma Titus-Glover, said while there was some access to workshops, nearly 25 per cent of institutions reported that classroom conditions were not conducive to learning, and 73.6 per cent lacked adequate assistive devices for LWSNs.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh