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The Executive Secretary of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Dr Prince Hamid Armah, has indicated that the Common Core Programme (CCP) which is in its second phase of implementation will address the challenges currently facing the country’s educational system.

He said the new curriculum had been carefully designed to meet the needs of the 21st century learner, adding: “we need a curriculum that will be responsive to the needs of the 21st century.

We are no longer looking for graduates who will write and pass but graduates who are team players, problem solvers, critical thinkers, innovative and can communicate effectively to help solve many of our national problems,” Dr Armah told journalists ahead of the national stakeholders consultation to discuss the CCP scheduled for today (Friday, February 28, 2019) in Accra.

He added that the CCP sought to address the shortfalls in the current school system in relation to learning and assessment and promote better high school education that met the varied learning needs of the young people in the country.

New definition of basic school

According to him, children were no more believed to be tabula rasa.

He stated: “Science shows that even in the belly of their parents, babies are able to develop early language learning if their parents start reading to them during pregnancy.”

He said the government had, therefore, decided to reform the country’s curriculum from KG to SHS, which was now the new definition of basic school within the context of the Free SHS programme.


“The Standard Based Curriculum for the KG to P6 is now being implemented with the emphasis on the learners, not the teachers.

We are not looking at the teachers setting objectives and trying to achieve their own objectives.

We are rather setting standards that we want the children, not the teacher, to be able to know and demonstrate,” Dr Armah noted.

Anchor of curriculum

He said the curriculum was anchored on activity learning, problem solving and investigations to develop curious minds with critical thinking skills.

Dr Armah stated that for purposes of consistency, the children who were going through the KG-P6 curriculum must be made to go through a similar curriculum which focused more on doing and activity based, hence the CCP.

According to him, the CCP, which was expected to begin this academic year, would see JHS One students studying only core subjects till the end of SHS1.