How the Absence of a Designated Safeguarding Lead Makes Students Vulnerable.
Ghana has a strong legal and policy framework designed to protect children. The Children’s Act, 1998 (Act 560), establishes that the best interests of the child must be the primary consideration and places an obligation on individuals with knowledge of child abuse to report such cases to the Department of Social Welfare. The Ghana Education Service (GES) Code of Conduct also explicitly prohibits sexual relationships between teachers and students, with violations attracting severe disciplinary action, including dismissal. In addition, the National Schools Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA) has introduced reporting platforms such as NaSIA Safety Watch to allow concerns about school safety to be raised.
Yet, despite these safeguards, the reality remains troubling: Ghana’s greatest child protection challenge is not the absence of rules; it is the weakness of the systems responsible for enforcing them.
This series seeks not only to expose the gaps that leave students vulnerable but also to propose practical solutions. Identifying the problem is only the first step; building safer schools requires collective responsibility and deliberate action.
The Missing Siren
In many Ghanaian schools, particularly public institutions, there is no clearly identified senior person responsible for overseeing child safeguarding. This raises a fundamental question: Who is responsible for protecting students when concerns arise?
International safeguarding guidance emphasizes the importance of a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL)—a person who takes “lead responsibility for safeguarding and child protection” and serves as a trusted point of contact for staff and students who need to raise concerns.
But in many Ghanaian high schools, who exactly is fulfilling this role?
The absence of a DSL creates a dangerous vacuum. Concerns may be ignored, poorly managed, delayed by bureaucracy, or disappear entirely. Without someone with the authority, training, and dedicated responsibility to coordinate safeguarding efforts, protecting children becomes an inconsistent process rather than an institutional commitment. When safeguarding responsibility is unclear, several critical problems emerge.
Firstly, no clear accountability. The first challenge is the absence of ownership. When no individual is responsible for safeguarding, who ensures that child protection policies are updated, communicated, and followed? Who organizes regular safeguarding training for staff? Who monitors whether teachers understand their responsibilities?
When safeguarding becomes everyone’s responsibility without a designated leader, it often becomes no one’s responsibility.
A second major problem is the lack of clear and trusted reporting pathways. Students and staff may not know who to approach, how to report concerns, or whether their complaints will be taken seriously. Effective safeguarding requires systems that are “well promoted, easily understood, and easily accessible” so that children can confidently report abuse.
However, when these systems do not exist, students are forced into desperate situations. In one reported case, a female student secretly recorded her teacher in an attempt to gather evidence because she feared that her word would not be believed against that of a respected adult.
This is more than an individual tragedy; it is evidence of a serious breakdown in trust. A child should never feel that self-protection requires becoming an investigator.
The third challenge is the absence of consistent monitoring of school culture. Safeguarding is not only about responding after abuse occurs; it is about identifying warning signs before harm happens.
A DSL is responsible for ensuring that concerns about staff behaviour are documented, reviewed, and analyzed for patterns. Small incidents that appear insignificant in isolation may reveal a larger problem when viewed together. Without someone responsible for reviewing these concerns, warning signs can easily be missed until serious harm occurs.
Read the continuation in the next post
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