Scepticism over Gov’t announced CSE Pull Out -CSE funded Textbooks to schools to suffer

President Akufo Addo’s weekend announcement to religious leaders that his government will not implement the controversial Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) has raised disturbing questions about the CSE reportedly in motion in some parts of the country  since 2018.

“As long as I remain the President and a Christian, it [CSE] will never happen, that I will agree to anything which will compromise the values of our society. All the things you heard are not true,” President Akufo Addo told a group of religious leaders at the Jubilee House over the weekend.

However, excerpts of documents available to Whatsup News shows that the policy has already been kick-started by the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG). This is contained in a June 2018 update leaflet prepared by one of the key stakeholders of the CSE, the Swedish-owned foundation called the Youth Harvest Foundation.

In the leaflet, it stated that while final plans are being made to roll out the CSE in 2019, the PPAG had already “taken a step forward to implement the national guidelines in schools, using their evidence-informed programme titled “Know It, Own It, Live It”. The Know It, Own It, Live It operational manual is the main subject of contention as it contains explicit sexual content to be taught school kids, such as masturbation, acceptance of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender (LGBT), exploration of diverse sexual acts, etc.

Critics, think the President’s rejection failed to specifically address the body of evidence showing that the CSE has already been sneaked into the training manuals of teachers and that it has subliminally been incorporated into the curriculum authorised by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA).

For instance, in the curriculum for Primary Four to Primary 6, a suspiciously looking section admonished teachers to teach pre-teens to “respect the sexual rights of others”. Critics think this is a clear LGBT subliminal insertion that conforms to the Know It, Own It, Live It manual.

There are also evidence of training programmes held for trainers of teachers between August 26, and August 30, 2019, at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Technology. These teachers were taking through extensive CSE training.

The contradictory statements that have come from the government, the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service (GES), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and others have given opponents cause to have doubts about the President’s pronouncement.

Meanwhile, Whatsup News has picked up reliable information that the Matthew Opoku Prempeh-headed Ministry of Education has been thrown into a state of confusion following President Akufo Addo’s announcement.

If the CSE is indeed scrapped totally, the Ministry will be forced to return funds issued it by the Swedish government and other international agencies to push the CSE through, says insiders.  Whatsup News gathered that part of these funds had been allocated to procure general textbooks for Ghanaians schools, but now, the ministry may be faced with forfeiting the ability to procure madly-needed textbooks for schools across the country.