Secondary Education Reforms In Ghana: The Case For 4-Year SHS With A First-Year Generalist Curriculum

I will begin this article by acknowleding the support of my brother in law, Dr. David Ansong who supported me by reading through my scripts and also making useful contributions to this work. I am in support of the idea of Ghana revisiting a four-year Senior High School (SHS) education. Three years of SHS, as we currently have, is inadequate for effective secondary education for a good number of our students. As a matter of fact, the three-year program is further cut short by two academic terms, putting students learning in jeopardy.

A careful review shows that SHS students spend barely two and a half years on academic work as the first term of the program is usually spent on admissions, and students write their final exams before the end of the final year. The two and half years that SHS students spend on academic work robs a number of students of the time they need to gain mastery of their program. The government and policymakers should give serious consideration to four-year secondary education to guarantee no less than three full years of effective secondary education.

Arguably, the change from the old system (5 years at Ordinary Level and 2 years at the Advance level) to the new system (3 years of lower secondary and 3 years of upper secondary) was a necessary reform to bring our educational system up to speed with the changing trends in future workforce development. Many developing and developed countries including the United States run a two-tier secondary education system that is largely identical to Ghana’s. However, a lot has gone amiss with the implementation of this two-tier secondary education system in Ghana. Without discounting the structural, infrastructural, and human resources reforms needed to improve the current system, I would like to mainly focus on two interdependent issues: duration of SHS and placement of students into programs primary based on BECE aggregate scores.

Necessary reforms during transition from JHS to SHS

Currently, it appears that the main criteria for selecting students into SHS programs are the grades obtained at Junior High School (JHS). Students with high grades are often offered Science and Business programs, where as lesser grade students are offered Visual Arts and Home Economics. This mode of selection often suggests that Visual Arts and Home Economics programs are for weak students, a view that is not accurate. At the JHS level, adolescents begin to have objective clarity regarding not only their interests but also the academic areas that come more naturally to them. Proper career guidance at the JHS would then ensure better placement at the SHS. Unfortunately, the JHS curriculum has little to no room for career guidance. Thus, after several years of implementation, it appears the JHS does a poor job of helping students identify SHS schools and programs that aptly align with their strengths and interests. Given that career guidance is a very critical aspect of any educational setup, the policy makers and administers ought to consider equipping SHSs with resources to assume this career guidance and placement function. However, more importantly an additional year of SHS would be necessary to afford administers and teachers time to know the students and place them with appropriate programs in their schools.

Merits of a 4-year SHS with a first year generalist curriculum

SHS students would benefit from a first year generalist curriculum that exposes them to the basics of at least one elective of all programs. Though some few schools run first year curriculum that is close to generalist, the practice is not common. This was the case of the third year of the old system before programs are selected in the fourth year. An attempt by the JHS system to address this necessity is not being met as some subjects such as Accounting are not clearly defined in the current JHS course structure.

There is tremendous value in allowing students have a feel of most if not all electives offered at the school in the first year of SHS education. After a one-year SHS generalist curriculum, students would be better prepared to make informed decisions about their program choice in consultation with their parents and teachers. The first year of SHS will, therefore, ease students into their desired programs. Aside from aiding students to make informed choices with program selection, a prep year in SHS holds promise for identifying academically strong JHS graduates from very deprived communities who for lack of resources could not make good grades for proper placement. The first year generalist curriculum will give them the opportunity to redeem themselves, thus injecting some level of fairness into our education system.

Additionally, our current SHS programs appear to put students in silos upon commencement of the program. It is not common to come across science student taking a class in Economics, Accounting, Graphics or General Knowledge in Art (GKA). This is an anomaly which deserves the consideration of policy makers. I remember colleague science students of mine who had the option of pursuing GKA. Some of these colleagues performed better than the elective students coming natural to them and therefore could easily pursue it as a well-paid hobby. This lack of flexibility in combining subject from different programs robs students of the benefits of interdisciplinary including integrative learning, creative problem solving and critical thinking, all of which are critical for the 21^st century workforce.

By
Aaron Kweku Adjabeng
P. O. Box SA 184,
Somanya.
Email: adjabeng.kweku@gmail.com

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