Sri Lankan girl sacked from school suspecting wrongly as pregnant

by Ajith
25-Oct-2017

Sri Lanka Ministry of Education and the National Child Protection Authority have started seperate investigations against a school principal on an incident of sacking a girl from a school suspecting she was vommiting because of pregnancy. 

Newspapers reported that the teenage girl who had not eaten breakfast due to poverty had vomitted. The female principal of the school suspected the girl had been pregnant and urged the parents to withdraw her from the school. 

Medical tests done later by professional doctors in Dambulla Government Hospital proved the girl had neither been raped nor she was pregnant. 

Ministry of Education has Directed the Provincial Director of Education of the North Central Province to investigate the incident and take actions against the perpetrators if any child right violation has taken place, a spokesman of the Ministry of Education said. 

The girl was a grade 10 student of a school in Kekirawa in Anuradhapura district. The father said to a newspaper that he had been to school upto grade 2 and his wife had never attended school.

The case indicates the gaps among the skills of the school teachers in terms of sexual and reproductive health and rights of the students.

National Youth Health Survey (2012-2013) conducted by the Adolescent and Youth Health Unit of Family Health Bureau suggested that 50 percent of young people lacked knowledge about basic sexual and reproductive health.

Accurate, age-appropriate and culturally relevant information is important to make responsible and informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.

However, certain sections in Sri Lanka still see these issues as taboo and unfortunately some teachers are also among them. As a result, rape, child marriage and teenage pregnancy are also reported too often in Sri Lanka.

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