This is to ensure that the full nine terms of teaching and learning are fully exhausted by students as required by the syllabus.

Speaking at the Meet-The-Press series today [Thursday], the Minister for Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh, said the change is expected to improve results for final year students since they would have adequate time to prepare.

[contextly_sidebar id=”TeQk8XoL5lwo6MNfgJfgljHneeYaDkiT”]“The SHS syllabus is for nine terms, three terms in a year, so we envisage that by the time the child has finished the nine terms, he or she would be ready to take the West African Senior School Certification Examination. The West African Senior School Certification Examination starts in February, which is the second term, and finishes just the first week in the third term, so it means that the whole of the second term they lost teaching and learning to exams and they never had any teaching and learning for the third term. Meaning that three terms out of the nine wasted, so it was six terms they were using for a syllabus that said nine terms. No wonder the results were poor.”

The Minister also noted that, his outfit has met WAEC over the issue, adding that “we’ve agreed with the West African Examination Council that we don’t want to start the exams in February…so this year we hope that the WAEC will start the exams sometime in May…so that we would have covered the nine terms before the students start exams.”

Politics of 3/4 year SHS duration

Successive governments have toyed with the duration of Senior High School in Ghana.

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor’s government changed the three year SHS duration system in 2007 to four years, due to similar concerns being raised by Opoku Prempeh.

But the National Democratic Congress (NDC) reversed it back to three years, claiming the four-year duration brought undue hardships to parents.

It appears the Akufo-Addo government is seriously considering extending the length to four years again.

The Minister of Planning, Professor Gyan Baffour in September 2017 revealed that, government is monitoring the three-year SHS system to inform a possible review back to four years.

“The time lost, we have to make it up. That is the first thing that we are trying to do now, and based on that, we can now use the analysis that they do after that time, to see what the public thinks and to decide on whether we move for three years or four years,” he added.

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By: Godwin A. Allotey & AJ Akuoko Sarpong/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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