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President John Dramani Mahama has announced that the government has created dedicated funding for the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme to address delays in the release of funds to schools.
He said the arrangement had improved the supply of food to students and reduced complaints from heads of SHSs.
The President further stated that government was also working with the World Bank to mobilise a $300 million facility to end the double-track system in SHSs by the end of 2027.
He said scrapping the double-track system would enable all students to attend school simultaneously and increase the hours of interaction between teachers and students.
Addressing a town hall meeting in Wa in the Upper West Region last Saturday, the President also defended recent examination results, saying that improved invigilation and the reduction of examination malpractice were helping the country to get an accurate picture of students’ academic performance.
“The government wanted to make sure that students were getting the grade that they were really worth, rather than cheating," he said.
The town hall meeting in Wa was part of his regional tour in the Upper West Region.
Still on local education at the lower level, President Mahama stated that his administration had not approved the wholesale introduction of Arabic and Chinese languages into the educational programmes of public basic schools across the country.
He consequently appealed to the public to ignore claims that Arabic and Chinese would soon be part of the curriculum of all public schools.
President Mahama emphasised that while Arabic remained a part of the curriculum mainly for Islamic schools, it had not been approved to be introduced across the board for all public basic schools.
The President clarified the issue during at the town hall meeting in Wa last Saturday.
President Mahama’s visit to the Upper West Region is the latest leg of his Resetting Ghana Agenda tour across the regions.
“As President of the Republic of Ghana, I want to say with all emphasis that no such policy has been approved by the Cabinet that I chair,” he said.
President Mahama emphasised that the training of Arabic teachers was not to introduce Arabic into all public schools, but was tied to the existing English-Arabic schools for Muslim communities.
The initiative, he further explained, began much earlier when Jerry John Rawlings was Head of State, and said it followed concerns about the low enrolment of children from some
Muslim communities into formal education over fears that those children could be introduced to some other religious orientation.
The President said the introduction of Arabic eased the fears of the Muslim community, and encouraged Muslim parents and elders to take their children through formal education.
He said the government had since continued with the training of Arabic teachers to support the teaching of Arabic in the existing English-Arabic schools.
“There is training of Arabic teachers because in the time of Rawlings we saw that the Muslim communities were not sending their children to school,” President Mahama said.
The President said while Arabic would continue to be taught in relevant facilities, introducing Chinese would even be a tall order.
“Why do we have to introduce Chinese into the public school curriculum when we can’t teach French?” he asked.
“French-speaking countries are all around us. We are not even getting our act together to teach French. And why would we go and introduce Chinese?” he said, and further asked where the country could get teachers of Chinese to fill the classrooms of basic schools across the country.
President Mahama further stated that any major change in the subjects being taught in public schools would have to be approved by Cabinet before becoming official government policy.
“Cabinet approves curriculum. If there’s a curriculum that’s making changes to the subjects that are taught to our children, it’s going to come to Cabinet before it becomes official policy,” he said.
The issue of the possible wholesale introduction of Chinese and Arabic into the curriculum of public basic schools came to the fore following the supposed recommendation by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) to the Ministry of Education.
He said the recommendation was part of a complete curriculum review exercise for basic schools from Kindergarten to Primary Six.
While the bigger picture was to improve teaching and learning, enhancing young learners’ ability to grasp knowledge, the bit about Chinese and Arabic dominated the discussions about the intended reforms.
The Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has since grabbed opportunities to state that no such recommendation has been approved for implementation so far.
