For this academic term, there shall be no examination for pupils in public basic schools, Director in-charge of Curriculum and Resource Development of National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Alhaji Seidu Mahama has disclosed.
He said NaCCA was frantically working around the clock to come out with a National Assessment Framework, which would be implemented next term.
Speaking to Ghanaian Times on Wednesday in Accra, Alhaji Mahama said assessment would be based on the pupils’ classroom work and homework performances.
He said the directive was not due to the delay in the printing of the newly-introduced curriculum text books for primary pupils, as teachers had been well trained to conduct practical questions for pupils.
“Any teacher should be able to assess a child’s ability, competence and behaviour from previous performances, and not necessarily settings ‘pen and paper’ examination at the end the term,” he said.
He added that assessment of a child was not necessary to be conducted at the end of the term, but rather, through daily and weekly classroom performances.
Alhaji Mahama said assessment and scrutiny of the newly-proposed textbooks for basic schools in the country was underway, as most of the proposed textbooks do not conform to the new curriculum.
He said plans were far advanced in the selection of textbooks that best conform to content and structure as stipulated in the guidelines of the newly-introduced Standard Based Curriculum for basic schools.
Alhaji Mahama was confidence the textbooks would be ready soon, although he could not confirm the exact date for the printing out of the textbooks.
The Ghanaian Times gathered that public schools were supposed to write their end of term examination on December, 9, 2019.
Although, some schools had set up their questions following directives from the Ghana Education Service (GES), they were later informed of the new directive from NaCCA.
BY BERNARD BENGHAN
