Ghana Education Service Introduces New School Uniform for High School Students

Ghana Education service has introduced a new school uniform for pupils in all public Junior High Schools (JHS) across the country. Students are expected to start wearing the new school uniform from next academic year, 2019-2020.
The change of the school uniform forms part of reforms in the educational sector announced by the government through the Ghana Education Service (GES). The GES said it is ready to change the current popular brown and yellow khaki school uniform for the next academic year.
The Director-General of the GES, Prof Kwasi Opoku Amankwa speaking to the press in Accra on Thursday said the new uniform is primarily to distinguish the JHS pupils from their peers at the primary level.
Speaking in glowing terms of the new curriculum for primary schools, Opoku-Amankwa said the reform is in line with international best practice, which requires a review every five years.
“A key feature of the new curriculum is the introduction of a national assessment examination at classes two, four and six,” he said
This will replace the status quo where students are assessed nationally during the Basic Education Certificate Examination.
The existing curriculum has been faulted for its great emphasis on preparing learners just to pass examinations rather than to actually acquire knowledge.
“Other challenges in the existing curriculum include content overload and an inability of the assessment system, without sufficient data, to help fashion out improvement in teaching and learning.
“Indeed the current landscape in terms of learning outcomes is not encouraging,” Opoku Amankwa told the press.
The current uniform, locally referred to as Konkonte and nkate nkwan (groundnut soup) and worn by pupils at the basic level in public schools, was introduced over 30 years ago by the government.