PARENTS ON SPOT FOR AIDING EARLY MARRIAGE IN ENDRU PRIMARY SCHOOL

The school sign post. Photo by Godwin Abedican.

By Godwin Abedican.
Arua City
 
As term two of the academic year 2025 began on Monday May 26, 2025, a number of female learners have not reported for lessons at Endru primary school, reasons being that some got married off.
 
This has therefore placed some parents of the school on the spot for having secretly married off school girls during the recently concluded term one holidays.
 
During a school visit by the education officials in the city organized by Integrated Child Service Consult that is implementing the foundation for learning project in partnership with Aga-khan, Ronald Atabua, the head teacher of the school revealed that early marriages have remained a very common occurrence in the school.
 
“Its true teenage girls at our school got married during the holidays. It happened and we are still hearing from the community. Where we are there is rampant discos and when these girls are at home, parents don’t follow their whereabouts hence some of them get pregnant as they go for these discos,” the head teacher confirmed.
 
“There is one in P.6 who dropped out and is doing hair dressing saying she is doing that to get money, we had to convince her to come back to school. For the one in P.7 who got married, she is currently not attending classes and yet the policy says she should sit for her PLE exams. This is going to affect her performance at the end. There is one in P.6 who got married and the parent took the decision to bring her back to school. The challenge is that, they are rushing for boys who cannot even provide for the needs of their homes when they get married,” he narrated.

Endru Primary School is one of the schools that reported low turn up by learners during the visit whereby out of 1968 pupils enrolled on the Education Management Information System (EMIS) only around 300 reported by Thursday May 29, 2025, 4 days into term two.
 
Amaku Lino, the PTA chairperson of the school regrets that when such things happen, the people involved do everything possible to ensure the issue does not reach the authorities.
 
“We heard the reports of some of our girls having married during the holidays. But the bad thing is that when parents see that such thigs have happened, they don’t tell us what is going on and later on we get to know that they were actually interested in the marriages and they go ahead to negotiate such marriages. And now the challenge for as the management committee of the school is when the decision comes from them it becomes difficult for us to intervene and take any action,” he said.
 
Amaku further says that, they are now thinking that if such a thing happens, since it kills the hopes of getting first graders, such girls should be taken back to school and parents marrying off the girls should face the law.
 
Arua city Education officials together with the school administration
and area LCs in a joint meeting during the inspection.
 
Meanwhile Drate Judith the CDO Arua city during the visit says her office will intervene in the issue and ensure investigations in to such occurrences.
 
“We needed to visit these girls and ascertain the circumstances that they are in so that if the girl is able to be brought back to school, it is done. For those who have registered for Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE), even if it means accommodating her in that situation during the pregnancy so that she can be able to complete her primary level education, that will be very important for us. This means that the PTA and the school management have to join hands so that we create enabling environment for such girls to be able to successfully sit their PLE,” she said.

“As Arua city we are also engaging with Save the Children, we have 9 social welfare officers who are helping us to comb through the communities carrying our sensitization and also increasingly reporting so that action takes place much easier on these cases of sexual violence and teenage pregnancies. We are hopeful that with their interventions in place, we shall be able to sensitize the children and also their care-givers against this vice,” she reasoned.
 
In an interview with Buza Zilly, the Senior Inspector of Schools Arua city, she calls upon those who have involved in such to reverse their decisions.
 
“Some girl children have already gotten married. We have candidates who have already registered for PLE and yet the normal registration date is May 30, 2025. Here we are seeing some female learners are already not at their homes but married, even some boys who are pupils have also married school age going girls and these issues are not reported to the administrators at the school and us at the education department,” Buza said.
 
“Some parents have gone ahead to negotiate bride price with the relatives of these boys. We want to warn you that, you may be acting out of ignorance but by the time the law will catch up with you, it is going to be very difficult for you to answer,” she cautioned.
 
According to her, where the girl is under 18years, the law is very clear and there will be no compromise, stressing that those involved will face it accordingly.
 
Arua city council is yet to produce an ordinance which is in its final stages and will be used as an instrument of enforcing and preventing teenage pregnancies with the hope that this will help to lawfully apprehend perpetrators of such.