ICT, French, English and Math to become new compulsory subject in the reviewed SHS Curricula.

The minister of education Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh hinted that efforts are underway in ensuring curricula review to fit the double track system and make other subjects compulsory across the country.

According to the Minister, the curricula review became necessary in order to add information communication technology (ICT) and other subjects like French to English and Maths as compulsory subjects.

Speaking to the press on August 7 in Accra, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh expressed worry over how the current curricula allow students offering pure science to study integrated science as a compulsory subject.

He said instead of science students studying integrated science as a compulsory subject, the new curricula will replaced it with either ICT or French.
"If you look at the current curricula, a student doing science is forced to do integrated science as well, meanwhile he is doing chemistry, physics, biology and even elective maths. Why shouldn't that student be doing ICT instead of Integrated science? So we are reviewing the curricula and we want to make sure that subjects like ICT, English and Math as well French become the compulsory subjects. ", the Minister stated.

Dr. Matthew Prempeh also justified government decision in adopting all year round education system.
According to him, the all year round education system otherwise known as the semester or double track system was to Increase enrollment, contact hours, class sizes and among others. The education minister added that the program will be rolled out in 400 Senior High Schools out of 696 schools across the country to increase enrollment from 1000 to 1500.
He said the criteria for the selection of the 400 schools was based on a data available to the ministry indicating how students select their schools every year from the Ghana Education service.

He said the double track system was a temporal measure to enable government ample time to solve problems affecting the free SHS program.
The double track is expected to be carried out from September this year and it will affect only SHS 1 students.
The semester system is an intervention of government to accommodate more students within the same facility and also to reduce overcrowding in various schools across the country.

By: Mensah Richard