Pupils in public kindergarten (KG) and primary schools across the country will from next academic year use a new curriculum in teaching and learning activities, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has announced.
The Director-General of the GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, who launched the document in Accra yesterday explained that the new curriculum was integrated into concepts to mainly promote literacy and numeracy skills.
“At KG, the number of learning areas is to be reduced from seven to four, comprising literacy, numeracy, our world, our people and creative arts.
At lower and upper primary, the number of subjects remains the same however, there will be fewer concepts and more in-depth treatment of concept in each subject though greater emphasis will be placed on literacy and numeracy,” he stated.
According to the DG, a new curriculum had become expedient following deficiencies detected in the old syllabus which was last reviewed in 2007.
“By international best practices, the curriculum must be reviewed every five years but that had not been so, the old syllabus is also too overloaded with subjects and content, there is limited flexibility in teaching and learning and over-emphasis on passing exams instead of ensuring children are able to apply knowledge and learning,” he indicated.
Admitting that the promotion of quality education encompasses adequate human resource, infrastructure, funding among others, Prof Amankwa argued that “curriculum reforms was crucial to enhance learning outcomes and nurture a generation of learned people to drive national development and compete favourably with their compatriots in other countries in the job market”.
Under the new curriculum, the DG mentioned that a national assessment for primary two, four and six would be conducted periodically to track children performance while “a standard-based curriculum will be introduced at every stage in school.
This means that a student is expected to demonstrate an understanding and mastery of knowledge and skills they learn as they progress through their education.”
The “History of Ghana” will be a compulsory subject for all pupils from primary one to six as Religious and Moral Education (RME) and Physical Education (PE) are expected to be standalone subjects under the new syllabus.
Prof. Amankwa pointed out that the GES would train about 150 “master trainers” on the new curriculum nationwide who would in turn train about 3,900 district and regional trainers.
He said about 152,000 KG and primary school teachers were expected to be trained across the country by the master, regional and district trainers, adding that “there will be continuous professional development through the setting up of learning communities for teachers to enable them share ideas and experiences”.
Meanwhile, the GES is expected to roll out a new curriculum for JHS and senior high schools in the 2020/2021 academic year.
By Abigail Annoh and Frederick Gadese-Mensah