GES directs 3rd-year SHS students to report to school on August 19

All third-year senior high school (SHS) students are to report to school on Monday, August 19, 2019 to begin academic work for the first semester of the 2019/2020 academic year.

The reopening, which comes four weeks ahead of the official commencement of the semester, is part of the academic interventions to prepare the students for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and address a five-week loss of time.

The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, who announced this at a press conference in Accra yesterday, explained that a similar intervention was made for the previous third-year students, adding that the information had already been communicated to the affected students and their parents.

Early reopening

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa explained that the early reopening for the final-year students was crucial because “if we allow them to run the regular semester programme, they will be finishing school somewhere in August next year.

“However, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) timetable indicates they will be starting their WASSCE in April and that by first week in June, they would have completed school.

“So, what it means is that if we allow them to follow the regular programme, they may be at home when it is even time to write the exam,” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa told members of the media at a packed GES conference room.

He said at a stakeholders engagement, the GES would suggest to Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) to introduce interventions such as early morning classes and weekend classes “so that they can catch up”.

Similarly, the second semester for the third-year students would be arranged differently from the rest of the students such that their reopening date would be brought forward, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa added.

Outcome

“Last year, we got the third-year students to report to school on January 5, 2019 and they were able to have enough time to prepare, and we can all attest to the results that we had this year. It is our resolve to ensure that we do better than that or at least we maintain our new stance.

“For the first time, the results for Mathematics moved from 38 to 64 per cent,” he indicated, describing it as encouraging as it tied in to plans to make Ghana a Mathematics-friendly country.

The GES director-general further announced that for the additional work the teachers had to do because of the arrangement of the timetable for the third-year students, they would be paid “intervention money” just as was done for the teachers last year.

Basic schools

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa also announced that the 2019/2020 academic year for basic schools would begin on September 10, 2019, while that for the SHS One and Two would be announced in due course.

He explained that even though the GES had put out the dates for reopening, as part of its regular stakeholder engagement, “we are meeting with CHASS, the unions and our regional directors to still go through some of these issues”.

Contact hours

On contact hours, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said per the new timetable and school calendar, “we believe that we will even gain more contact hours with the arrangement that we have made”, explaining that there was no cause for alarm on time management.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa further explained that before the Ministry of Education moved the schools from the term to semester basis, the contact hours were 1,080 hours for the academic year, “but when we moved to the semester system the contact hours are now 1,134 hours”.