GES assures that CSE will not replace advocacy for sexual abstinence

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has assured Ghanaians that the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) under the new Standard Based Curriculum does not seek to throw out the advocacy for sexual abstinence but rather to reinforce it.

This follows criticisms by the anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and (LGBT) campaigners that the introduction of the CSE in public schools would rather replace advocacy for abstinence with sex participation at any age, if one so desires.

The GES on the contrary, has stated that the goal of the CSE was to rather equip the school children with age and cultural appropriate information to explore and nurture positive values and attitudes towards their sexual and reproductive health.

A statement issued in Accra by Ms Cassandra Twum Ampofo, the Head of Public Relations Unit, GES on Monday and copied to the Ghana News Agency, explained that the new CSE guidelines would rather help develop the children’s self-esteem, respect, for human rights and gender equality.

The CSE guideline rather sought to help students to make informed decisions about their health, with emphasis on Ghanaian cultural values and norms.

It said the implementation of the new curriculum had nothing to do with LGBT issues, masturbation or explicit displaying or labelling of intimate body parts.

“In all the training programmes on the curriculum from simulation through master training to the sensitisation of the 152,000 kindergarten to primary six teachers, there was no mention of any of the issues referred to above”, it stated.

It said member states of the United Nations were mandated to roll out the CSE in accordance with their cultural norms and values.

“It is therefore wrong to insist that CSE as practiced in the Europe or North America has the same structures and content as is being rolled out in Ghana,” it said.

It attested to the fact that the GES on April 29, 2019, wrote to the Acting Executive Secretary of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment to request the insertion of the phrase “within the acceptable cultural values and norms of the Ghanaian society” in the third objective of page three of the CSE guidelines in circulation.

However, the insertion, it said had not been made yet, and therefore, GES had not finally approved the CSE guidelines being discussed on various platforms.

It assured the public that no special sessions have been organised or would ever be organised by the GES to train students as advocates for sexual rights talk less of LGBT rights, which, were culturally, socially, legally, morally and religiously alien to the country.

“The GES is a state agency and will not under any circumstances implement any form of programmes, which goes contrarily to the legal, cultural norms, values and beliefs of the Ghanaian,” it noted.

The introduction of sex education into the basic school’s curriculum was expected to begin from next academic term.