A press statement signed by Mr Edward Appiah, Director General of NaCCA, and made available to the Ghana News Agency, said countries were required to provide “universal primary and secondary education” to all children, according to SDG 4.1, and that Ghana only decided that secondary education would be the minimum level of education offered to its citizens.

It said: “In keeping with this, Senior High Schools were added to the definition of ‘Basic Education’ but this does not automatically transform SHS into basic schools as is being suggested.”

The statement also noted that the Pre-Tertiary Education Act, 2020 (Act 1049), Section one clearly indicated that basic education comprised two years of kindergarten, six years of primary education, and three years of Junior High School.

“The secondary education also comprised three years of SHS or three years of Technical and Vocational Education and Training,” it added.

The statement said the curriculum reform started in 2017 with the establishment of a 14-member Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) chaired by Professor Kwame Osei Kwarteng.

It added that the MAC held several meetings, consultations, and stakeholder engagements, and presented its report and recommendations to the Cabinet in October 2017.

“Cabinet approved the recommendations and tasked NaCCA to start the review of the Pre-tertiary Education Curriculum, and based on the recommendations of the MAC, NaCCA started the review using a phase-level approach as recommended by the MAC,” the statement said.

It stressed that Standards-Based Curriculum (SBC) for Primary was completed and rolled out in 2019 while the Common Core Programme (CCP) for JHS was completed and rolled out in 2020.

The statement said the development of an SBC for SHS education was in progress, and that the process had gone through different stages of development: consultations, stakeholder engagements, trialling, quality assurance, and others.

“It will be instructive for stakeholders to engage with NaCCA to really understand the SBC for SHS,” it added.

The statement noted that SBC for SHS would be rolled out immediately after extensive stakeholder engagement and cabinet approval.