The Ghana Education Service, GES, has announced new academic calendar for this year to eliminate the double track system in Senior High Schools.
At a media briefing in Accra, the GES said with the new calendar, there will be no green and gold track.
According to the Director General of GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, the transitional Calendar will only apply to public schools in the country.
“For the SHS, this year we began the process to phase out the double track. And as you may be aware, when the government introduced the double track, it was indicated at that time that it was working towards phasing out the double track within 5 to 7 years. To phase out the double track means additional infrastructure needed to be provided in the double track schools. We have what we call the transitional calendar which will lead us to the 2023, 2024 where we come back to our September, October, June, July academic year.” the Director General said.
Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa said Basic schools will reopen on January 18, 2022 and vacate on June 10, 2022. He noted that the academic calendar in basic schools has also been scheduled into semesters.
“I am pleased to inform you that next week, 18th January which is Tuesday, KG1 to JHS 3 will all be going to school. Last year, when we drew our calendar, the view was that they will be reopening on 11th of January but we moved it a week further, because we got them to be in school for an extra week, so that we could do the National Standardized Test. At that time, we indicated that we will make up for the one week lost. This time round, they are all doing semester except that the basic school semester is different in terms of the number of weeks from the S.H.S semester but they are all doing semester. ” he indicated
He urged students, teachers and parents to continue adhering to the safety protocols and asked parents to vaccinate their wards to avoid the spread of COVID 19.
“We want to urge parents, students, school authorities and teachers to continue to observe the health and safety protocols we have put in place. The nose mask wearing, washing of hands and all the health protocols. For Senior High Schools students, the Ghana Health Service has written to us and we are also subsequently going to write to the schools and also to the general public that for children 15 years and above, they should all vaccinate before they go to school. For those already in school, arrangements were made for them to take their vaccination, their health is very important to us” Professor Opoku-Amankwa pleaded
The full calendar for this Academic Year for Pre-tertiary public schools will be made available on various media platforms, Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service websites.
