Former Education Minister Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has urged that all school staff receive mandatory child‑protection training at the start of each academic year. The move aims to prevent sexual abuse in schools by ensuring teachers understand their responsibilities and the consequences of inappropriate conduct.
Speaking on JoyNews’ The Pulse, Dr Adutwum said the training should be compulsory for every educator and other education workers, with participants required to sign that they have received instruction on child protection and comprehend the conduct expected of them. “If we start the mandatory training, the teachers sign that I’ve been trained and these are things that I don’t do,” he said.
The former minister warned that abuse can begin with seemingly minor incidents before escalating, making early recognition and intervention essential. “Sometimes we look at the extreme case, but we forget that it may have started in a small way and then graduated,” he added.
He argued that regular training would help staff recognise warning signs, understand appropriate professional boundaries and know when and how to report suspected abuse. He also stressed the importance of ensuring that staff understand their reporting obligations rather than leaving individual schools to determine how complaints should be handled.
The proposal follows comments by Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu that the government is examining child‑protection practices in the United States. Dr Adutwum said mandatory reporting and recurring child‑protection training should form part of any effort to draw lessons from the US system.
He said the training should not be a one‑off exercise but a recurring requirement at the beginning of each academic year, ensuring that school staff are regularly reminded of their obligations.
The call comes amid public concern over allegations of sexual abuse involving students at Obuasi Senior High Technical School. The case has raised questions about how schools respond to complaints, whether staff recognise and report suspected abuse promptly, and what safeguards are needed to prevent further harm to students.
Dr Adutwum has proposed a broader package of reforms, including mandatory reporting of suspected abuse and fingerprint‑based background checks before teacher licences are issued. His latest call adds recurring child‑protection training to those proposals, with the aim of strengthening prevention and improving the response to suspected abuse across public and private schools.
