Syllabuses ready for education reform to take off

Accra, Sept. 6, GNA - The Ministry of Education, Science and Sports on Thursday announced that syllabuses to be used under the Education Reform 2007 were ready and had been accessible on the Ministry's website - www.edughana.net - since September 3.

The sector minister, Professor Dominic Fobih, who announced this at the weekly meet-the-press session in Accra, said the Curriculum Research and Development Division (CRDD) developed the syllabuses for Kindergarten, Primary, Junior High School and the core subjects for the Senior High School.

"As part of efforts to get the syllabuses to the schools by the beginning of the academic year the Ministry duplicated the syllabuses onto compact discs and forwarded them to all District Directors," he said.

"The Directors are to print copies and distribute them to all schools in their respective Districts." Schools with Internet connectivity have had theirs sent directly to them already. The Government last year announced new education reforms beginning from this academic year, which starts on Tuesday September 11. Under the reforms, basic education is to be done in 11 years made up of two years of Kindergarten starting from age four, six years of Primary school and three years Junior High School (JHS).

From JHS, students have the option of either doing a four-year Senior High School (SHS) programme or attending a Technical, Vocational and Agricultural institution where a four-year programme is also done inclusive of the core SHS subjects.

Prof. Fobih said the training of teachers in the use of the new syllabuses had begun and would be continued in phases running from September 4 to September 27.

"The teachers are being taught the best methods to apply in the new syllabuses to ensure effective and comprehensive teaching in the classrooms," he said.

The Minister said the reforms placed emphasis on the teaching of Information Communication Technology (ICT) at all levels of the education system, with the requisite syllabuses developed for both the basic schools and SHS.

"However, due to the general state of development in some communities, the Ministry in conjunction with the Ghana Education Service (GES) has decided to begin the integration of ICT at the SHS level in phases.

"The first phase will involve 250 selected SHS around the country."

He said in addition to the 250 schools, there were 100 relatively well-endowed schools that already had the infrastructure in place to be able to implement the programme. Prof. Fobih said the Ministry had asked the National Service Secretariat to post at least 250 Service Personnel with ICT background and qualifications to the selected schools. 6 Sept. 07