World Children’s Day: 1.2m pupils out of school in Ghana

As Ghana marks World Children’s Day, the Ghana Statistical Service puts a spotlight on vulnerable children emanating from the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) report on children which revealed that 1,215,546 children of school going age are not attending school in the country. And also, out of that number, almost one million (942,427) children have never attended school.

“The Savannah Region has 43.2 per cent of children who have never attended school which is the highest percentage in the country”, the report indicated.

These findings emanate from the 2021 PHC Thematic Brief on Childhood Vulnerabilities which presents statistics on children focusing on the number and distribution of vulnerable children and the correlates of child vulnerabilities in Ghana.

The report further shows that, over a quarter of a million children (275,562) in the ages of 15 to 17 years have difficulty in performing activities in at least one of the following domains: sight, hearing, physical (walking or climbing stairs), intellectual (remembering or concentrating), self-care, and speech.

“There are 5,976 children in Ghana living without shelter i.e. sleeping outdoors. About two in every five (43.6%) of the children without shelter are in the Greater Accra Region, which has the highest share followed by the Ashanti (15.7%) and Eastern (5.4%) regions”, the report said.

Nationally, 51,081 boys and 79,733 girls aged 12 to 17 years have ever been in union i.e. married or living together with a partner. One out of every five children, representing 20.4 percent, that have ever been in union is in the Northern Region which has the highest number of children ever in union (26,698).

The report further indicates that one-third of the household population under 18 years representing 3,862,259 children are multidimensionally poor.

The regions with the highest numbers are Greater Accra (550,118) and Ashanti (539,048), have more than half a million children each being multidimensionally poor.

The Thematic Brief on Childhood Vulnerabilities has been released by the Ghana Statistical Service ahead of World Children’s Day which is celebrated annually on 20th November. This year, UNICEF is encouraging a focus on equality and inclusion for every child.

Source Eric Nii Sackey