The management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has officially announced Tuesday, January 18 as the date for the reopening of all basic schools in the country.
This follows the recommendations of the ministerial committee on schools’ calendar set up by the Minister of Education to realign the dates of school reopening dates to conform with the circumstances of the times.
For the Secondary Schools, first year senior high students are expected to be in school tentatively April 4, while second and third year students are expected to report on Monday, February 7.
Speaking to the media in Accra yesterday, the Director-General of the GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa said the announcement should put to rest the brouhaha surrounding the date for reopening of schools.
He explained that due to the disruption caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was the need to rearrange things to ensure that the academic calendar was realigned to avoid undue disruption.
Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the new calendar was a transitional one which would invariably restore the school system to the old which was June-July.
He said the date for the first years had been made tentative because it was dependent on the release of results of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) result.
Throwing more light on the calendar for the SHS, he said the transitional calendar eliminates the doubling of the year groups, implying that at any period all year group student would be on campus at the same period.
He said SHS three students would be in school from February 7 to April 3, 2022 and then break for the Easter Holidays and then return on April 19 until the end of their WASSCE.
Similarly, he explained that the second year students whose are divided into sessions would have the first session start on February 7 to April 26 with the second session commencing June 26 to July 16.
Furthermore, the first session of the first years would start from April 4 to June 20 and then the second session will commence from September 4 and end on September 24.
In all Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the third years were expected to spend 32 weeks for the year with contact hours of 1,280hours, while the second years were to do 30 weeks with contact hours of 1,200hours.
Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the new calendar had been realigned to allow both the primary and JHS to also run the semester system.
He noted that the service would soon announce a complete calendar for the transitional period between now and 2024.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
