Goaso (B/A), Sept. 15, GNA - Thirteen girls from Junior Secondary Schools in the Asunafo District could not take part in the 2003 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) because they were pregnant. At the time of writing the BECE, four of the girls were nursing their children while the pregnancies of the remaining nine had reached advanced stages making them incapable to join their colleagues at the examination.

The Asunafo District Director of Education, Mr Baryeh Amaniampong, revealed this at the opening ceremony of this year's weeklong Science Technology and Mathematics Education (STME) Clinic for 100 school children from the Asunafo District at Goaso.

The participants, made up of 90 girls and 10 boys, have been encamped to undergo intensive sessions to acquire basic knowledge in Science, Technology and Mathematics education.

Mr George Yaw Boakye, the Asunafo District Chief Executive noted that though the performance of girls in the sciences and mathematics has improved tremendously since the inception of the STME project, the same could not be said about the district's general performance at the BECE. He urged teachers, parents, School Management Committees, Parent Teacher Associations (PTAS), Traditional Authorities and Civil Society to pool their resources to uplift the poor performance of pupils in the district.

Mr Ben Osei Kufuor, Member of Parliament for Asunafo North, bemoaned the situation where the district on numerous occasions had to fall on women from other districts to represent it at prestigious contests.

He said pupils and students in the area need to work hard to enable the district rub shoulders with its counterparts in the region. The District STME Coordinator, Mr Kwame Fosu Gyeabour commended the Asunafo District Assembly for supporting the programme with 17 million cedis to and said that such a gesture could entice the participants to pursue higher academic laurels.