2023/2024 school calendar is being worked on

A ministerial committee set up by the Minister for Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum is working on the 2023/2024 school calendar for public pre-tertiary schools, the spokesman for the Education Ministry, Kwasi Kwarteng has said.

In an interview with UTV monitored by AcademicWeek, the Ministry in charge of Education Public Relations Officer (PRO) said the calendar committee at the appropriate time will make available the new calendar for students.

“The school calendar committee chaired by John Ntim Fordjour has been able to draft the academic year calendar to 2023/2024 but they are still consulting stakeholders on it,” the Ministry’s spokesperson told United Television.

The school calendar committee he said is chaired by the Deputy Education Minister, Ntim Fordjour with representatives from various sectors of the Ministry including GES, Free SHS Secretariat, NaCCA, TVET Service and heads of schools.

In line with Kwasi Kwarteng, the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Kwasi Opoku Amankwa has said the 2023/2024 school calendar will see the next academic year start in September/October and end in June/July.

“The new school calendar that we are drawing also looks beyond 2022 to 2023 and 2024 to see how we can gradually come back to the school calendar year, which ends in June/July and starts in September/October,” Prof Opoku noted.

The development of the 2023/2024 school calendar comes after the Minority Caucus in Parliament asked the Ghana Education Service to suspend a 2-term calendar early introduced by the Ministry of Education for basic schools.

In a release copied to AcademicWeek, the Caucus said it understands the adverse effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the education sector but the move to switch from the 3-term to the 2-term calendar is a step in the right direction.

The press statement signed by the Ranking Member of Parliament, Mr Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, disputed the new school semester-based system lacks professional touch for a more academic-friendly and healthy one to be considered.

“This academic calendar is an importation which does not suit our educational environment. As a Minority, we support the teacher unions in whatever means they will take to stop this semester system,” the Caucus stated in the statement.