GES restores basic schools’ academic year calendar to ‘September’
The management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has restored the academic year calendar for basic schools in the country to September after it was disrupted by the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
After operating a transitional calendar in 2021 and 2022 with the school year starting from January to December, the Ghana Education Service began the process of returning to the September calendar last year, beginning on October 3, 2023.
“The Ghana Education Service wishes to inform you that the reopening date for basic schools (kindergarten, primary and junior high schools) for the first term of the 2023/2024 academic year is October 3, 2023,” GES said in a statement.
Amid the return to the September calendar, the Ghana Education Service says basic school students across the country will return to school on Tuesday, September 10, 2024, for the commencement of the 2024/2025 academic year.
Starting on September 10, 2024, kindergarten (KG), primary and junior high school (JHS) pupils and students per the 2024/2025 academic calendar released by the Ghana Education Service will spend a total of 15 weeks for the first term.
The first term will end on December 18, 2024, with schools vacating on December 19, 2024. The second term of the academic year will resume on January 7, 2025, and last till Wednesday, April 16, 2025.
The students and pupils will then go on vacation on Thursday, April 17, 2025, having spent another 15 weeks in school. Schools will again reopen for the third term on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, until July 24, 2025, to end the academic year.
A source at the Ghana Education Service (GES) speaking to the Daily Graphic newspaper said the post Coronavirus (COVID-19) academic calendar which will see students spend 12 weeks in the third term has come to stay.
Amid the outbreak of the locally transmitted coronavirus, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on March 16, 2020 directed the closure of all schools across the country after the country recorded its initial cases of COVID-19.
The announcement brought all academic activities to a halt, disrupting the academic calendar and forcing the Ghana Education Service to shift the basic schools academic calendar year from September/October to January.
This continued until 2022 when the Ghana Education Service (GES) under the auspices of the Ministry of Education (MoE) developed a transitional timetable in an attempt to revert the academic calendar to the pre-COVID-19 era.
The pre-COVID academic calendar, which they termed as ‘the regular schedule’, allowed for better planning for the effective delivery of education to children in the country as it provided enough contact hours with students.
