She opted to start selling vegetables to sustain her life and that of her daughter. It was not until 1997, when the government announced the re-entry policy that Jane was given a glimmer of hope in her life.

“The news was a source of hope for me,” says Jane who is now a secondary school teacher at Kabulonga Girls High School.

She says upon hearing that she had the right to return to school, she quickly went to her former school to register but her parents were not willing to continue paying school fees for a ‘woman.’

Peer pressure

“I was really intelligent, but I fell in the trap of peer pressure, it took my former teachers to convince my parents that I deserved a second chance, just as the government had announced,” she said.

Jane says going back to school was not an easy task, as she faced a lot of stigma from her peers. “Getting back to school was not as easy as I thought, I faced a lot of stigma, I was called all sorts of names especially from my fellow girls, it took a lot of courage to fit into the school environment again,” Jane noted.

She says despite the stigma, she faced other challenges that come with parenthood. “There were times when my daughter was sick and needed my attention, then I would miss school, it was not an easy road,” Jane stated. She said in her five-year period at school, a lot of girls came back to school but the stigma continued and those that were not courageous enough dropped out of school for the second time and continued mothering their babies.

Now a teacher at a girls´ school, Jane is a strong advocate of re-entry policy, a policy that is surrounded with so much controversy. She says girls get into premarital sex because of poverty, peer pressure and to a certain extent, cultural practices.

Rural areas are the worst hit by cultural practices because marriage is survival for the girl-child in these areas.

Even when a girl-child is growing up she is always considered as a potential wife. In 1997, a conference on girls’ education was held in  Lusaka, at which the then Minister of Education, Dr Siamkayubu  Syamujaye, announced that school girls who became pregnant would no longer be expelled. He also declared that those who had been expelled in 1997 should be allowed to return to school.

Intervention

Forum for African Women Educationalists of Zambia (FAWEZA) spearheaded the campaign to bring back the girls to school until the Ministry of Education instituted the Re-Entry Policy.

The guidelines on how the policy was to be implemented were worked out by FAWEZA in conjunction the Ministry of Education and UNICEF. The Re-Entry Policy sparked country wide debate, with most people arguing that the policy would encourage girls to be reckless with their behaviour.

Those that support the policy saw it as a good thing for a girl-child who had so much potential and does not deserve to be punished alone for an act committed by two people.
Others say the policy will reduce backstreet abortions because most girls regard abortions as the only way out of their predicament.

Despite the arguments, it is FAWEZA’s belief that the girls need a second chance to go back to school if they are to come out of the vicious cycle of poverty. Like Jane, many girls in Zambia today have successfully succeeded in life despite having children at a tender age.

Jane however cautions girls not to take the policy for granted and go on rampage producing children.

“Parenthood comes with a lot of responsibilities and needs a lot of maturity, the best a girl child can do is to avoid premarital sex at all cost,” advices Jane.