Efforts to support girls’ education paying off

The 2011 O’level final examination results were released on Friday, with some interesting trends. As was the case in the 2010, rural based schools continued to post better results in comparison with urban based schools. The results also showed that girls registered an improvement slight in performance. Althoughboys remained the overall best performers, the improvement in the performance of girls should not go without notice. Girls’ secondary schools, some of them newly established, performed exceptionally well, with their candidates making it to the list of the best nationwide. Five out of the ten best students countrywide, are girls. Traditionally, boys got the advantage over girls in terms of accessing education and proceeding to the next levels. And, statistics have shown that girls are more likely to drop out of school due to a myriad of reasons. It is important, that parents, teachers and all stakeholders in the education sector, put more focus on the girl child. A lot has been done, and the improvement in the girls’ performances is proof that the efforts are paying off. But there is still need to do more. Girls should be encouraged to take up science subjects and compete with boys in that field. Additionally, self esteem and confidence are other values that should be instilled in girls for them to realise their full potentialities. Ends