New SHTS curriculum to end ‘chew, pour, pass’ syndrome – NaCCA

slated to be implemented next academic year, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) says the new Senior High and Technical Schools (SHTS) curriculum will end the “chew, pour, pass” syndrome among students.

Speaking at stakeholders’ engagement on the new curriculum, an official of the National Curriculum Council said his outfit is developing a more comprehensive curriculum that prioritises problem-solving and innovations.

“We can’t continue to do things the old ways that we were doing it. Our old objective-based curriculum appears to be more examination-oriented, and students complete school and they become unemployed,” the NaCCA official stated.

Professor Kwame Osei Kwarteng, the Board Chairman of the NaCCA added “Now it’s like students’ complete school and they are not flexible and can’t think critically because they chew, pour, pass and go their way.”

In a related development, The Ghana Education Service (GES) is set to deploy guidance and counselling personnel to Junior High and Senior High Schools to prepare and educate students ahead of the full rollout of the new curriculum for secondary education in the country.

Speaking to JoyNews’ Emefa Apawu on The Probe monitored by Thisterm.com, the Director General of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Prof Edward Appiah said plans are far advanced for the curriculum rollout.

“GES is moving all their guidance and counselling staff who are in the classroom. Now they will be focusing on these activities and they will be having their offices in the schools to guide the children. Of course, the teachers will also help with that.

We want to even start from Junior High School (JHS) 3 so that the children going to Senior High School (SHS) 1 will at least have an idea,” the National Curriculum Council Director-General said in the interview.

Commenting on the availability of teaching and learning materials for the curriculum, Professor Edward Appiah assured the materials would be made available before the full implementation of the second cycle school curriculum.

“NaCCA, our mandate is to assess and approve textbooks, we don’t develop textbooks. However, knowing that this is a new curriculum, we had to develop resource materials for the schools and the learners.

For the teachers, we are done. I have told you about the teacher manual. So each manual for each subject,” he explained.