Second-cycle schools calendar to be restored to ‘September’ – GES

Following the restoration of the basic schools’ academic calendar to September, an official from the Ghana Education Service says plans are underway to restore the second-cycle schools’ calendar to its pre-coronavirus era.

His comment follows the then Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Professor Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, who stated that the academic calendar for Senior High Schools is expected to return to normalcy in 2024.

In a 2022 interview with Citi News monitored by Pretertiary.com, the former GES Director said ,“Though Ghanaian candidates are the only group to sit for exams during this period, they will join their other counterparts in West Africa by 2024.”

The second-cycle school calendar before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic was from September 2019 to August 2020, with a basic principle that students would have 8 months of contact time in a 12-month calendar year.

In other news, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has scheduled for basic school children across the country to return to school next Tuesday for the commencement of the 2024/2025 academic year.

This is the first time, post-coronavirus, that first-year students are officially beginning the academic year in September, as was the case previously.

After operating a transitional calendar in 2021 and 2022 with the school year starting from January to December, the Ghana Education Service (GES) began the process to return to the former calendar last year, beginning from October 3, 2023.

The Ghana Education Service (GES) reverted to the pre-COVID-19 academic calendar for basic schools following the completion of the 2022 academic year.

Per the 2024/2025 academic calendar released by the GES, kindergarten (KG), primary, and Junior High School (JHS) pupils and students will spend a total of 15 weeks for the first term, which officially starts on September 10, 2024.

The 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. In all, the schoolchildren will spend 12 weeks in the third term.

Meanwhile, Ghana is unable to participate in the May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates (SC) because the calendar for Senior High Schools has yet to be fully reset.

Currently, final-year Senior High School (SHS) students in the country are sitting the Ghana version of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School for the third successive year.

However, the other four member countries of WAEC — Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia — have already returned to the May/June calendar for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination for school candidates.

A total of 460,611 candidates representing 212,954 males and 247,657 females from 1,003 Senior High Schools across the country are participating in the 2024 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School.

Ongoing at 1,000 centres across the country, the management of the not-for-profit-making organization, in a statement sighted by Pretertiary.com, said the figure is 2.66% higher than the 2023 entry figure of 448,674.

The 2024 edition of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates, which commenced with Visual Art Project work on August 5, 2024, will end on Friday, September 20, 2024.