We are rushing with the new education curriculum - Senior Lecturer

A senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology and Education at the University of Education Winneba, Samuel Ziggah, has accused the Ghana Education Service (GES) of rushing with the implementation of the new curriculum for Basic Schools.

According to the educationist, the one-week training that was given to teachers to acquaint themselves with the new curriculum is inadequate. Last month, the Ghana Education Service trained about 152,000 kindergarten and primary school teachers on the new curriculum with the assistance of 3,900 regional and district resource persons and master trainers nationwide.

But Speaking with GhanaWeb on the celebration of International Literacy Day 2019, Mr Samuel Ziggah said teachers need more time to understand the new curricular before they can successfully impart the knowledge acquired.

“The teachers themselves don’t understand the curriculum, how are they going to implement it in September? We are not serious, this curriculum training should have taken one full year so that the teachers take hold of the curriculum, understand it and implement it well but we are rushing. There are a lot of challenges, even with the way teachers teach.”

Samuel Ziggah believes that the constant change of textbooks hinders the performance of teachers and this translates into the poor performance of students.

Ghana has been trying to adopt a new curriculum for its basic school starting this year, particularly at the pre-tertiary level, to make education more responsive to the human resource and development needs of the country.

Below are the latest released curriculum by the Ghana Education Service (GES) for basic schools in Ghana:

* Computer Curriculum for Primary Schools (Basic 4-6)

* History Curriculum for Primary Schools (Basic 1-6)

* Physical Education Curriculum for Primary Schools (Basic 1-6)

* Religious and Moral Education Curriculum for Primary Schools (Basic 1-6)

* Science Curriculum for Primary Schools (Basic 4-6)

* Mathematics Curriculum for Lower Primary Schools (Basic 1-3)

* Mathematics Curriculum for Higher Primary Schools (Basic 4-6)

* English Curriculum for Lower Primary Schools (Basic 1-3)

* English Curriculum for Higher Primary Schools (Basic 4-6)

* French Curriculum (Basic 1-6)

The new Curriculum can be downloaded on the website of Ghana Education Service (GES) and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA).