By CHUSA SICHONE –

.Wanchinga

GENERAL Education Minister Dennis Wanchinga has said school heads should transfer to other institutions girls who fall pregnant and want to continue learning but fear to be stigmatised once their maternity leave ends.
The move to transfer the young mothers to other schools is aimed at encouraging the girl child to continue with school instead of her dropping out after delivery.
Dr Wanchinga said the Government introduced the Re-entry Policy (in 1997) which allowed girls that fell pregnant while in school to continue with their education after delivery, but that others opted to completely dropout after giving birth for fear of discrimination at school.
“That’s why the policy of the Ministry of General Education to ensure that if the girl falls out of the school system for pregnancy and they fear going back to school because of stigma, we encourage the school heads to give them a transfer to another school so that we still are able to retain the same number of girls who drop out of school because of pregnancy and the same number of girls coming back to school after they have delivered,” the minister said.
Dr Wanchinga described the ministry’s policy regarding pregnancy involving pupils as progressive and was hopeful that it would prevent the number of girls seeking to continue with school after giving birth from being narrow.
Dr Wanchinga said all Government, community and grant-aided or faith-based schools were expected to follow the Ministry of General Education-approved programmes, which included Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), and likened those that resisted the advice to “practising ostriches”.
He said propagating an ostrich mentality of burying the head in the sand on matters of CSE would not help in any way as risks were everywhere and so the Government anticipated the public, community and faith-based schools to follow the curriculum approved by his ministry.
Dr Wanchinga further said the Ministry of General Education’s role on issues like pregnancy and diseases was to provide information to the learners for them to make informed decisions and not for it to provide the apparatus for the pupils to prevent pregnancy or diseases.
Dr Wanchinga was responding to questions from journalists during a media briefing in Lusaka on Monday on the sidelines of the launch of the ‘Our Rights, Our Lives, Our Future (03)’ programme aimed at scaling up the CSE programme.
Swedish Education Minister Gustav Fridolin, Higher Education Minister Nkandu Luo and United Nations resident coordinator Janet Rogan attended the media briefing.