New curriculum has nothing to do with LGBT, masturbation - GES responds to criticisms

The Ghana Education Service has responded to the ongoing debate over the new Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) into the basic school curriculum.

The GES in a statement says they are surprised at the “wild speculations and claims” on the matter.

Some of the speculation centred around fears on sensitisation on sexuality and LGBTQ ideas.

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The new curriculum indicates that pupils from pre-school to the final year of Senior High School will be taught various modules of the course which is geared towards entrenching healthy sexual attitudes.

But the GES maintains that the new curriculum being implemented “has nothing to do with LGBT issues, masturbation or explicit display/labelling of intimate body parts.”

Portions of their statement read: "The new standard-based curriculum being implemented has nothing to do with LGBT issues, masturbation of explicit display/labelling of intimate body parts"

“The GES is a state agency and will not under any circumstances implement any programme which goes contrary to the legal, cultural norms, values and believes of the Ghanaian people.”

The Ghana government and United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launched the CSE programme which the GES said: “does not seek to throw out the advocacy for sexual abstinence but rather seeks to reinforce it.”

The GES explained that the member states of the United Nations are mandated to roll out CSE in accordance “with their cultural norms and values.”

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

The GES maintains that the curriculum will be implemented “within the acceptable cultural values and norms of the Ghanaian Society.”

The service also assured that no special sessions “have been organised or will ever be organised by the GES to train students as advocates for sexual rights, let alone LGBT rights which are culturally, socially, legally, moral and religiously alien to Ghana.”