The Reasons for the Rising Senior High School Dropout Rate

Name : SANDRA ADJEI
I D NUMBER: 10426272
ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT 2
THE REASONS FOR THE RISING SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT RATE

A senior high school dropout in my opinion is any student who failed to complete the full educational cycle which was designed for them. A senior high school dropout is simply anyone who did not complete the educational cycle designed for them. They stop schooling along the line for various reasons making them dropouts. They do not graduate since they didn’t finish the cycle. There are so many reasons that cause students to drop out of school and this will be discussed in the paragraphs below. In Ghana, one of the main causes of the rise in senior high school dropout rate is the issue of poverty. Many people drop out of school due to poverty rate. In Ghana, many children are out of school mainly because their parents or guidance cannot afford to pay for their school fees and other basic requirements that they need, leaving them no choice but for them to drop out of school. Since most of our senior high schools in Ghana practise the boarding house system there are certain things that the school requires that every student must bring. Students from poor homes who cannot afford these things are forced to stay out of school to prevent any form to embarrassment. Poverty has denied so many children the right to education. The standard of living of living in Ghana is very low, while the cost of living is very high making it very difficult for parents to provide the basic needs of their children and also funding their schooling. Children from such poor homes have no choice than to drop out of school and support their family by engaging in some activities to help raise money for the family. Some of the activities that the children find themselves doing maybe legal or illegal, but more often than not the kind of things they find themselves doing are more of illegal than legal since it is very hard to come by legal jobs without strong qualifications. This then leads to an obvious effect of child delinquency and social misfits in countries that threaten the lives of innocent victims in the society. The lives of innocent citizens are then endangered. This gives the government another burden of trying to fight such social menaces. Huge sums of money are used by government to ensure that they are captured and punished as well as to protect the lives of the innocent ones.
These children who are now placing the lives other citizens at risk could have been of greater help to the society if they had enjoyed education. Another thing that causes the rise in senior high school dropout is family problems. Family problems have denied many students the opportunity to enjoy education. Many a time’s children from broken homes normally drop out of school for various reasons. Children from homes that have issues or are broken normally go through a tough time in school and if care is not taken eventually drop out of school. If a child comes from a home with problems there are so many things that can eventually cause the child to drop out of school. Divorce, lack of supervision, death of the bread winner, large family size, catering for a sick family member, etc can all cause a student to drop out of school. Divorce has caused many children to drop out school simply because both parents sometimes fail to take responsibility of the child. This leaves the child no option than to drop out of school since none of the parents are unwillinging to pay the fees and continue to play the blame game. Large family sizes also sometimes result in school dropout. If the size of the family is too large some of them will be likely to drop out of school if the parents go into financial crisis, and it’s mostly the one in the higher grade that is asked to drop out. A student maybe asked to drop out of school to cater for a sick family member or old family member. In Ghana , since there aren’t any ‘homes’ for the old ,children are assigned to take care of old parents or grandparents or sick family members. The child will be forced to drop out of school to perform this duty. Also due to the unrevised nature of the public junior high school system, students most a times find themselves wanting in academic preparedness towards senior high school education. It is understood that students who are privileged enough to afford private junior high school are mostly not found wanting when the need arises in furthering their senior high school education since diligence was taken to teach them the basic core( math, science, and English ) as compared to their counterparts in the public sector. Therefore it wouldn’t be surprising to realize most of those children drop out along the way due to their inability to comprehend with the teaching module. They become emotionally distressed for fear of being mocked, teased, and shun by their friends. They begin to feel insecure and unhappy and very timid. They dropout eventually drop out of school. Peer pressure is another cause of the high rising of school dropout. Many students are influenced by their friends to skip school and engage in other unnecessary activities such as; playing of video games, watching movies, playing cards, going for parties etc.Once they start engaging in these activities they tend to get addicted to it and keep on skipping school hours to engage in these activities, causing them to fail in their grades and finally dropping out. Peer pressure also encourages most of these teenagers to rather dropout of school to engage in devious acts to gain easy and fast money. These teenagers tend to be more convinced that gaining money is better than wasting time in school so they follow their mischievous friends and drop out to engage in activities like the popular known fraudulent act called”sakawa” or petty theft which upgrades to armed robbery and killers with time. However people dropout of school also because of minor reasons like engaging in family business to earn money fast instead of wasting time in school. On the other hand most of the females also dropout due to the unfortunate incident of pregnancy which makes them early parents, so they rather dropout to work for the baby, cater for it, or just to avoid disgrace. Other unfortunate reasons why they dropout is because of harsh treatment from school peers or seniors either in the form of bullying,teasing,mockery etc. In the above paragraphs, reasons, causes and the effect of the rate of high school dropout has been clearly examined and detailed.