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Chool-Related Gender-Based Violence (SRGBV) is a pervasive issue affecting hundreds of children across the country.
It encompasses physical, emotional, and sexual violence inflicted on pupils, students, teachers, and staff within educational settings.
SRGBV can have long-lasting, devastating effects on individuals, including anxiety, depression, and decreased academic performance.
At a meeting with Directors of Education organised by WiLDAF Ghana in collaboration with Oxfam in Ghana, to introduce a toolkit on SRGBV developed by WiLDAF, a Consultant,
Prof. Simon-Peter Kafui Aheto, said Ghana, like many other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, faces challenges related to gender-based violence within its educational system.
According to him, incidents of SRGBV have been reported across different levels of schooling, affecting both boys and girls, though girls were disproportionately impacted.
He explained SRGBV to refer to acts or threats of sexual, physical, or psychological violence occurring in and around schools due to gender norms and stereotypes, as well as unequal power dynamics.
He gave the key contributory factors to SRGBV as cultural and social norms, where patriarchal attitudes, rigid gender roles, and the normalisation of violence contributed to the persistence of SRGBV.
Also, he said there was a lack of awareness and reporting mechanisms where many victims are reluctant to report incidents due to fear of retaliation, stigma, or lack of support services.
Also, he mentioned inadequate policies and enforcement, saying while policies against gender-based violence existed, their implementation remained inconsistent, with limited accountability for offenders.
Another contributory factor, he said, was the limited teacher and administrative training where educators and school administrators often lacked the necessary training to identify, prevent or respond effectively to SRGBV incidents.
He therefore said the development of the toolkit was apt as it would help address these challenges and serve as a practical guide for teachers, school administrators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to identify, prevent and respond to SRGBV effectively.
The toolkit, he said, had the potential of helping in creating safe learning environments, raising awareness of gender-based violence and promoting gender equality in schools.
According to the WiLDAF Programme Manager, Lois Aduamoah-Addo, the project was a WiLDAF Ghana and Oxfam in Ghana, four-year initiative under the DANIDA Strategic Partnership II Project.
Funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the project, she said, is led by Oxfam Netherlands/Oxfam in Ghana and executed in partnership with several local organisations including IDEG, NORSAAC, Friends of the Nation (FoN), Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), FOSDA, Africa Education Watch, Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), and YEFL Ghana.
She said the overarching goal of the project was to promote a more equal, just, accountable, peaceful, and sustainable Ghana, where no one is left behind and advances gender equality, climate justice, and inclusive development.
She added that the SRGBV remained a pervasive issue globally, and children, particularly girls, were exposed to various forms of violence in educational settings, including physical punishment, sexual coercion, psychological abuse, and peer-perpetrated bullying and discrimination.
The Executive Director, WiLDAF Ghana, Melody Darkey, said the meeting was for specifically the Guidance and Counselling Directorate, the Girls’ Education Unit, School Health Education Programme (SHEP), and the Regional and District Education Directorates “because your leadership is central to one shared priority: ensuring every learner in Ghana is safe, able to learn, and able to thrive”.
She said SRGBV continued to affect learners and the learning environment, and it was often under-reported as studies showed that among Ghanaian Senior High School students, 20 per cent reported being forced to have sex in their lifetime, and 40 per cent reported being physically attacked in the preceding year.
Bullying, she said, remained common for both boys and girls and on the digital side, recent trends analysis indicates that WhatsApp and TikTok were dominant platforms among young people, and a significant proportion of youth navigate the Internet with limited monitoring—conditions that increase exposure to cyber harms, particularly for girls under 16.
“At the same time, our scoping work confirms that Ghana already has a strong legal and policy foundation for action—through the Constitution, the Education Act, the Children’s Act, the Criminal Offences Act, the Cybersecurity Act, the Electronic Transactions Act, and the GES Code of Professional Conduct, therefore, she said the gap was less about absence of rules, and more about consistent, practical implementation at school and district levels—especially confidential reporting, survivor-centred case handling, and functional referral pathways.
The Head, Guidance and Counselling Unit, GES, Gifty Sekyi-Bremansu, said the unit had developed key strategies which include the development of a national policy on safe school that outlines minimum standards for safeguarding in pre-tertiary schools, which she said was currently pending approval.
Also, she said they have developed guidelines for addressing sexual harassment reporting and prevention as well as the training of officers, school-based counsellors, teachers, staff and students on safeguarding and child protection concerns among others.
