GES announces reopening date for basic schools – 2024/2025 academic year
Students in class
GES announces reopening date for basic schools
The Ghana Education Service (GES) has announced reopening date for basic schools across the country for the 2024/2025 academic year.
According to GES, Basic school children across the country will return to school on Tuesday, September 10, 2024, marking the start of the 2024/2025 academic year.
This is the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that first-cycle students are officially beginning the academic year in September, as was the case before the pandemic.
After operating on a transitional calendar in 2021 and 2022, with the school year running from January to December, the Ghana Education Service (GES) initiated steps to return to the previous academic calendar last year, starting on October 3, 2023.
The GES reverted to the pre-COVID-19 academic calendar for basic schools following the conclusion of the 2022 academic year.
2024/2025 Calendar
According to the 2024/2025 academic calendar released by the GES, which was made available to Daily Graphic, kindergarten, primary, and junior high school (JHS) students will spend a total of 15 weeks in the first term, which officially begins on September 10, 2024.
The term will end on December 18, 2024, with schools vacating on December 19, 2024.
The second term of the academic year will resume on January 7, 2025, and last until Wednesday, April 16, 2025.
Students will then go on vacation starting Thursday, April 17, 2025, after spending another 15 weeks in school.
Schools will reopen for the third term on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, and the term will end on July 24, 2025, concluding the academic year. In total, students will spend 12 weeks in the third term.
A reliable source at the GES told Daily Graphic that the post-COVID calendar is now permanent. The source also revealed that efforts are underway to restore the second-cycle calendar to the pre-COVID era.
Disruption
Between 2021 and 2022, the academic calendar for basic and senior high schools was rescheduled to run from January to December, following the closure of schools in March 2020 as part of efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Management of the Ghana Education Service wishes to inform you that the reopening date for basic schools (kindergarten, primary, and junior high schools) across the country for the first term of the 2024/2025 academic year is October 3, 2023,” read a memo signed and issued by Dr. Kwabena Bempah Tandoh, Deputy Director-General of the GES in charge of Quality and Access.
Stakeholders’ Reactions
Teachers, parents, and school authorities have welcomed the return to the pre-COVID-19 academic calendar, which now runs from September to July. They have described it as an improvement over the transitional calendar, allowing better planning for the effective delivery of education.
Stakeholders noted that the earlier start of the academic year in the third quarter would provide more opportunities for students and families to prepare, including purchasing stationery and other school supplies.
Senior High Schools (SHS)
Ghana is currently unable to participate in the May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates (SC) because the SHS calendar has yet to be fully realigned.
Currently, final-year SHS students are sitting the Ghana-only version of the WASSCE SC for the third consecutive year. Meanwhile, the other four WAEC-member countries — Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia — have returned to the May/June WASSCE schedule for school candidates.
Schools’ Closure
On March 16, 2020, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo ordered the closure of all schools following the country’s first recorded cases of COVID-19.
The closure halted all academic activities and disrupted the academic calendar, shifting the start of the academic year from September/October to January.
This arrangement persisted until 2022, when the GES developed a transitional timetable in an effort to restore the pre-COVID-19 academic calendar.
