Despite considerable improvements in educating disadvantaged children in rural areas of Ghana and Africa for the past ten years, alarming disparities exist between the academic performance of rural and urban children.
Recent studies by EROP show that about 85 percent of children and families in poorest and remote areas of Ghana are not aware of the benefits or value of education and how these could alleviate poverty in their life. Parents from the poorest, most remote parts of the region have not been fully exposed to these benefits throughout their generation and so building school infrastructure alone without further support in creating this awareness of these benefits would not fully achieve the ultimate objective of education.
In some areas, most of the children perceive education as normal routine of going through Primary school. Most disadvantaged parents do not encourage their children to Primary or Secondary Schools because they prefer them to join them in menial farming or trade. These children are sometimes pushed to the cities to undertake menial jobs so that money could be sent home to help their poor families survive. Some of these children end up sleeping rough by the road side in the Cities, begging for money, selling basic items on the road side, forced into prostitution or slavery. As a result, the poverty cycle continues in the family.
