The Chairman of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Council, Mr Michael Nsowah, has defended the need for the current reforms in Ghana’s education sector beginning from the 2019/2020 academic year, which seeks to, among other things, introduce a new curriculum from Kindergarten to Primary Six.

He said ample time will be given to junior high school students to get acclimatised to the new reforms, which include the use of a newly-introduced school uniform.

“You don’t need to buy the new uniform that was displayed in September. Continue to use your very good uniform until it is so bad that you need to sew a new one,” he added.

According to Mr Nsowah, even though all the seven subjects currently being taught at the KG level were important, they were not in-depth enough, therefore, necessitating the decision to reduce the subjects to just four and integrate others into themes.

“We want to put emphasis on literacy and numeracy. It has proven that if children can communicate and can use numbers, it serves as a very good foundation upon which you can build future knowledge areas,” he said on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) with Benjamin Akakpo on Monday, 15 April 2019.

Mr Nsowah denied claims that the GES had failed to extensively engage stakeholders on the matter, insisting that primary stakeholders such as parents had been part of the consultative process from the initial stages.