Common core curriculum: Science students to skip Core Maths, Integrated Science

All senior high school (SHS) Science students will no longer be required to study Core and Elective Mathematics as separate examinable subjects from the 2024/2025 academic year.

Instead, they will be required to take Additional Mathematics, the Director-General of the National Council and Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Professor Edward Appiah, has hinted.

He further revealed that such Science students would also no longer study Integrated Science because they were already studying Pure Science.

This arrangement is similar to what existed in the country’s educational system post-independence until the major reforms which replaced the Middle School system with the junior high school (JHS), and the secondary school system with the SHS system.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Graphic Online’s Education Editor, Severious Kale-Dery, the Director-General of the National Council and Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Professor Edward Appiah explained that students pursuing General Arts, Business, Home Economics and Visual Arts would be the ones who would take Integrated Science, which would change to General Science and Modern Mathematics instead of Core Mathematics.

Directive

The directive came about with the introduction of the standard-based and common core curricula adopted for basic and junior high schools in the country respectively.

The Ministry of Education has revised the curricula for pre-tertiary schools in the country.

The new curricula, known as the standard-based and common core, seek to shift learners away from rote learning to acquiring critical learning skills.

The current final-year JHS students will take the maiden edition of the common core Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

Taking the Daily Graphic through the new curriculum for the JHS and SHS, Prof. Appiah explained that the current JHS 3 students began with the common core in JHS One, “and so, their BECE will be based on the common core curriculum”.

Trial test

He said NaCCA had also completed a trial test of the common core curriculum for SHS students, which would commence in the 2024/2025 academic year.

For the test-run of the curriculum for two continuous years for the SHS, he said, NaCCA had categorised the country into three zones to make the selection of schools for the trial test easier.

“For each zone, we picked Category A, Category B and Category C schools to do the trial testing, and we used the feedback that we got to finalise the document.

“Of course, we had to even engage other stakeholders before getting to this stage,” Prof. Appiah said, adding that with the finalised document now ready, NaCCA would do the final trial test of the document in 31 schools across the country.

“The trial will be completed in July so that it will go live in September when the academic year will be starting with the reversal to the old academic calendar,” he explained, stressing that the current JHS 3 students would start with the common core curriculum in SHS.

Prof. Appiah said JHS students who rushed to sit the BECE 2023 had lost, “because the students who are going to do this common core-based examination will have easier assimilation and transition.

“Our mode of assessment has changed.

Now, the students are being assessed along the line,” he said, adding that the current mode was a multiple assessment system and not the end-of-the-year assessment.

He further explained that the current system was such that the students were assessed during classroom exercises and project work, “and so, as the learner is learning, he or she is being assessed”.

Prof. Appiah added that with that mode of assessment, a teacher could actually decide not to conduct any end-of-year examination because he or she might have finished assessing the students already.