As part of his speech at a press briefing on Sunday January 30, 2022, the Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, stated that, unlike the former middle school system, the average and below average students find it difficult to compete in the current junior high school (JHS) system in Ghana, since there are no advanced facilities to prepare students through career paths.
According to him, the country created “a monster [when] we removed what used to be middle school, which gave people from disadvantaged backgrounds opportunities to catch up with the rest” in 1987.
He stated in addition that, “I think the weakest link in the education system is the junior high school because others will go the junior high school and do the quality secondary work; if you meet those students at Wesley Girls, they are ahead of the curve, and they are going to do much better than you.”
“We borrowed a concept from the United States…three plus three but we decided that the first three [JHS] is not something that we’re going to be very concerned about. Something needs to be done about the week middle which happens to be the junior high school,” he said.
Ghana passed a new legislation in 1987 which scrapped the then middle school system and replaced it with the JHS system, making the duration of basic school education nine years instead of the previous 10 years.
The Bosomtwe Member of Parliament further revealed a plan for the future that,
“We have junior high schools that under construction now and the facilities in there will be just like high schools; everything that is in the high school will be there.”
“It’s a pilot programme, and students who go through it would have had three years of quality junior high school, move on to the high school to do another three years, giving me six years making them competitive and making us compete with the rest of the world,” he assured.
Obsoul/Sixscribes
Is there any reason for leaving Physical Education & Health in the JHS 1 timetable and scheme?