Friday , March 29 2024

OVERLOADED CURRICULUM IN GHANA

Many educational reviews have been undertaken but the curriculum continue to be overloaded.
Education however, is the teaching, training and learning especially in schools or colleges to acquire knowledge and also develop skills. Education is commonly divided into stages such as preschools, primary school, junior high school senior high school, universities, Polytechnics, Nursing Training, and apprenticeship. Education has been the pillar of development in most countries and Ghana is no exception.

Ghana’s system of education has undergone several stages of restructuring over the past 25 years or so.
The most dramatic or the vivid change entailed phasing out the Ordinary level and the Advanced-level system based on the British mode of education. In the mid-1970s, the system of education in Ghana consisted of six years of primary education and at the end students were required to take a common entrance examination. After, students can proceed to the middle school or the senior secondary school for 4 years where they were rewarded  West Africa Certificate [WASC] and the general certificate education at the Ordinary level [ O-level]. At the end only few student were given the opportunity to undertake two year form six programme which leads to the joint examination for the higher school certificate and GCE at the Advance level [A-level].

Education as we all know is very vital in our country Ghana, since it therefore helps remove the blanket of ignorance among individuals .Nevertheless, it also help individuals to know their fundamental human rights and responsibilities in the country and therefore know when he or she is being swindled by another .
Similarly, learning enables the individual to put his or potential to optimal use. Without education the training of the mind would not be completed. The individuals who go through the educational process become a dependable worker, a better and a stronger consumer. For example, an employer will rather employ an educated man in his company rather than a non-educated to know how to keep the economy efficient and not get into a bind in the future society and Ghana as a whole. Importantly, education makes a man  right and a correct decision maker. Education is a necessary ingredient for national unity, stability and development.

However, education in Ghana is overloaded.Taking the senior high school for example, the curriculum has a core and elective subjects which include English language ,Mathematics, integrated science [Information and Communications Technology, and environmental studies] Social studies include [Geography ,economics, history and government] .The demand was to choose four elective subjects which were already highlighted from the core subjects .On the contrary, this alone has bombarded the curriculum making it overloaded since the same thing would be learn over and over again.

Surely, students are expected to account for that curriculum through an examination which is known as West Africa Examination Certificate [WASSCE]. These certificate aid students to gain admission to the tertiary institutions.
It baffles sometime when thousands of Ghanaian students seat for this particular examination and on a head count one will not gain admission to the tertiary level due to one or more failed passes all because of curriculum being overloaded and only few years allocated to finish them. When will our educational system be flexible by minimizing some of these subjects so as to make study easier for students. Surprisingly, taking the three and four year academic at the second cycle schools, it was obviously seen that the four years academic studies of the curriculum performed very well than the three years systems during their final examination[WASSCE].

The former Director General of the Ghana educational service, Micheal Kenneth Nowah says  Ghana’s educational system is overloaded and that is affecting the quality of education in Ghana. Countries like Ghana have the desire to review its educational systems to adopt new strategies to bring improvements but it tends to regard the school as the only educational agency in the society.

To minimize the overloaded curriculum one should specialize only in the related subjects leading to one’s career.This will benefits a lot of students and would also help them to focus in the right direction of their future careers.

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