2024/2025 Academic calendar out: Fresh SHS students report to school October 30

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has released the 2024/2025 academic calendar for senior high school (SHS) students ahead of the release of the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE). 

The calendar indicates that all first-year students are to commence the 2024-2025 academic year from October 30, 2024, 11 days from today.

The fresh students would be reporting to school with continuing students in the single-track institutions, and second-year students in the transitional academic calendar school for the new academic year on October 30. 

The start of the academic year is for both first-year students going to single track and transitional schools, as well as all second-year students. 

The current second-year students entering third-year in the transitional calendar schools would begin their end of second semester vacation on October 28 and resume on January 3, 2025 as third-year students.

Circular

According to a circular addressed to all regional directors of education, the start of the new academic year on October 30 for the SHS students is to revert the academic calendar to the pre-COVID-19 era, where the academic year began in the last quarter of the year. 

“This re-opening date aims to ensure that the school calendar starts in September next year and pave the way for our final year students to write their 2025/2026 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in May-June,” the academic calendar for pre-tertiary school signed by the acting Director of Schools and Instructions Division of the GES, Prince C. Agyemang-Duah, said. 

But throwing more light on the new calendar, the Director-General of GES, Dr Eric Nkansah, explained that the overarching reason was to align the calendar with the rest of the WAEC West Africa member countries.  

He explained that with the alignment, “we start the academic year in September and the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) is written in May/June.

“That is the whole idea. We cannot achieve May/June next year 2025, but if we are able to do the October this time, we will be able to start the academic year next year in September,” Dr Nkansah explained.

The GES Director-General added that, “once we start by September, we have already projected that 2026, our final year students will write May/June with the rest of the West Africa.”

He said the shift back to the pre-COVID-19 academic calendar was also necessary in order to align the pre-tertiary calendar with the universities, which had been “putting pressure on us to do so”.

Schools selection

On how GES planned to manage the pressures that would come with the Computerised Schools Selections and Placement System (CSSPS), Dr Nkansah said his outfit was aware of that and had positioned itself to address the challenges.

He explained that every year, GES was always able to manage the aftermath of placement, adding that apart from those who would be able to report to school on the stipulated date, the others were given some few days to sort themselves out.

“Once their issues are resolved, they join their mates in school,” adding that the same applied to people, who, for one reason or the other might want to change their schools. 

“There is nothing to worry about because our team is very ready to make sure they deliver the placement on time, even though the time is quite limited and short, we will still break our back to do what we can to make sure that we meet those timelines,” the DG assured Ghanaians.

When he was asked about the role of parents in ensuring their children are ready to report to school, Dr Nkansah said, “If for any reason the parents are not able to organise themselves to enable their children to report on the advertised date, we will still give them time to turn around.

He said the academic work would not start immediately because the first week would be for orientation. 

The DG explained that GES had learnt from previous experiences, expressing the belief that any challenges that would come up after the placement would be dealt with for everybody to have his or her school.

Dr Nkansah said during the last four years, “we have reduced the placement challenges,” giving the assurance that every candidate that qualified would be placed in a school.