MoE official gives new deadline SHS double-track system will end

Deputy spokesman for the Ministry in Charge of Education (MoE), Yaw Opoku Mensah says the double-track system currently in some public Senior High Schools (SHSs) will be phased out completely in the 2025 academic year.

In a post sighted by AcademicWeek, the Ministry of Education, Public Relations Officer said the shift system in various second-cycle schools is occasioned by infrastructural challenges amid the introduction of Free Senior High School.

Meanwhile, Kwasi Kwarteng, a spokesperson for the Education Ministry has said the introduction of free SHS and a double-track system have increased student enrollment in Senior High Schools and improved the quality of education.

Speaking in an interview monitored by AcademicWeek, Kwarteng said statistics by the West African Exams Council indicate Ghanaian candidates amid the two initiatives perform better than others from neighbouring countries in WASSCE.

“If you look at the recent WASSCE statistics, we have increased enrolment, improved class size, improved teacher-student ratio and teaching hours have increased from 1,080 to 1,134,” the Education Ministry spokesman stated.

He attributed the excellent WASSCE results of the first batch of free SHS students who sat for the 2020 edition of the WASSCE for School with students from Nigeria, The Gambia and Sierra Leone to the double-track system.

“Per the statistics available, out of over 455 students having 8 As in West Africa, we had 411 from Ghana. These 411 competed with students from Nigeria, The Gambia and Sierra Leone who don’t even run double-track,” Kwesi added

Highlighting measures put in place to phase out double-track in some Senior High Schools, Mr Kwarteng said the government is on the course of completing 584 out of 1,135 infrastructure projects in the education sector.

“That speaks to the commitment of the government to do away with the double track. I just want to set the premise that, double-track is not a challenge but an innovation response to increasing access to education,” the PRO said.