By Samuel Akumatey
Ho, July 16, GNA – Nestled in the cozy hills of the Volta Region’s capital of Ho, some 300 professional writers are churning out a new curriculum for Senior High Schools in the country.
A painstaking process to develop teaching and learning structures for Senior High, and Senior High Technical schools under the Education Strategic Plan 2018-2030, has been in the making since 2022, and stakeholders hope to produce a curriculum that is learner centered, inclusive, and most importantly, carries skills and competencies fitting the century.
Madam Rebecca Abu Gariba, Director, Corporate Affairs of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), the outfit leading the process, said the new curriculum was being designed to promote Ghanaian Values, and that the Volta Region was chosen as the birth grounds due to its serenity.
The new programmes of study also cater for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses.
“The Volta Region is where the curriculum was born and as I am speaking, our writers from all over the country are busy on the hill working,” she told separate meetings with teacher unions and the public in Ho.
Stakeholders at the various engagements received insight into the outlook of the coming curriculum and had the opportunity to input on its development.
Mrs. Gariba said teachers remained critical stakeholders in the curriculum development, which would ensure students had the right foundational skills.
The STEM courses would include aerospace and aviation engineering among cutting edge programmes, and she said it would help produce hands on graduates.
“We are in the 21st century and we live in a global village, and so we have to make sure that the subject that we give to our implementers would help us have graduates who are not only going to be local but ‘global’ – that means local and international as well,” Mrs. Gariba said.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the end of the regional stakeholder engagement, the Corporate Affairs Director said the curriculum was moving beyond review, having undergone structural analysis and evaluation excises, and that the draft was currently being trialed in 33 schools across the country.
The NaCCA is working with critical agencies in an Inter-Agency Curriculum Team and that panels of experts dealing with the subjects were drawn from the WAEC, university faculties, and teachers of colleges of education, among others.
Mrs. Gariba said they are working on developing quality pedagogical strategies that would be effective even for large class sizes and would imbibe interactive learning and role play.
She said the broadened engagements include with the National House of Chiefs, the Ghana Education Service as the implementor, and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education.
She said the NaCCA worked with political parties to ensure their manifestos aligned with the new curriculum.
“At the end of the day this curriculum would be co-owned by Ghanaians,” she said, adding that the media were also being kept in the pool of key actors.
Speaking of the quality of the various stakeholder consultations, she said: “It’s been massive.
“We’ve gone round the country and most of the questions, suggestions, and recommendations we get are almost the same, with varied differences based on the various regions.
“Most of the stakeholders we engaged welcomed the whole Senior High School Curriculum change because what is in the system is long overdue so its about time we brought onboard a new one and being in the 21st century we need to have a curriculum that answers to the 21st century demands of our children and of ourselves as teachers.
She added that the Government and its stakeholders had committed to providing the needed resources for the successful implementation of the new programmes, and that learning materials would soon be made ready and approved.
Addressing timelines for the curriculum development and deployment, she revealed that at present, the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools were in the process of developing timetables and programs for the various schools, and that upon approval, GES would be expected to imitate the roll out and implementation during the next academic year.
“We’ve engaged the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, and they like what they’ve seen, and we are waiting to engage all the stakeholders in the space, especially the implementers. Once they sort the time tabling and subject combination out and then we input what we got from the field, then we are ready for them once they open school. Parliament will give us approval once we are done”
Madam Mabel Viviey, Communications, and ICT Director at the NaCCA, said the curriculum would become the nation’s first to be developed on Ghanaian values, and that the pedagogy focused on utilising the immediate environment of learners to enhance learning experiences.
“It would make us proud as Ghanaians while programming students to think globally and compete globally. The goal of every good curriculum is to promote life-long learning,” she said.
Mr. Francis Yaw Agbemadi, the Volta Regional Director of Education commended various stakeholders for their contribution and called them to own the curriculum and ensure the objectives were met.
GNA