Public basic schools to reopen Jan. 18

The Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, has announced that all public basic schools in the country will re-open on Tuesday, January 18, 2022.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the schools were supposed to have been re-opened on Tuesday, January 11, but had to be rescheduled to January 18.

According to him, the additional week was to compensate teachers and pupils for delaying their vacation over a week last year,due to the National Standardised Test (NST), which was written on December 17, 2021.

He said the Service was working on the academic calendar on the reopening date of freshers and continuing students for senior high schools, adding that “the Ministerial Committee on Schools Calendar formed by the Ministry of Education had submitted its white paper to the Minister of Education.”

School calendar

The School Calendar Committee is chaired by a Deputy Minister of Education, John Ntim Fordjour ,and has representatives from National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), GES and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Service.

The school calendar will contain dates for all public school, activities, including reopening, vacations, and examinations for schools from this year 2022 to 2024.

It is expected to be a comprehensive calendar that will address challenges regarding dates and timelines of school activities and bring respite to parents and students.

Before this announcement, the Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Select Committee of Parliament, Dr Clement Apaak, had asked GES to immediately disclose public basic school’s reopening date for the 2022 academic year.

According to him, the delay in the announcement of the government school reopening date was a worrying situation that must be addressed quickly.

“We don’t know exactly when Public Basic Schools will reopen. Today, January 10, 2022, Private Basic schools have reopened. When will Public Basic schools reopen, we need to know,” the Education Committee member has stated in a release.

He further entreated the GES to put in place measures to replace the over 44,000 teachers from approximately 284,000 public basic schools that allegedly left the classroom in the 2021 academic year alone.

“44,000 teachers out of 284,000 Basic school teachers left the teaching profession in 2021 alone. This is 15%, the highest in 20 years. Why did they walk away from the classroom, and how soon will they be replaced?” he asked.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, Kwasi Kwarteng, had said his outfit and the Ghana Education Service (GES), in the course of this week, would make available the 2022 school calendar to the general public.

He said the School Calendar Committee set up by the Ministry of Education had submitted a final draft document to the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum.

“What the Education Minister has done is to now set the clarity, so that the inconsistencies and of course the discrepancies in our academic calendar, that we have been witnessing, will be a thing of the past,” he stated.

Questioned if the delay in the release of the 2022 academic calendar would not affect the studies of students, the MoE spokesman said even though the calendar had been delayed, it was in the best interest of prospective students.