Double-Track continues for Second Year SHS students – NAPO

The Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh in a press briefing has said senior high schools’ students will remain on the double-track system when the next academic year begins in September this year.

He further said the phasing out of the double track system for the second-year students would be based on when the additional infrastructure would be ready in each school.

“As and when a school was able to complete its additional infrastructure, its form two students will move into a single track,” he said.

Meanwhile, the government earlier this year had allocated an amount of $500 million from the securitization of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) for the completion of abandoned infrastructure and the construction of new structures in schools currently running the double-track system introduced by government last year.

The Ghana Report has gathered that in all 766 abandoned and new structures were to be completed across the country.

The Minister explained that even though funds had been released to that effect, assigned projects to some contractors remained uncompleted.

Cabinet has therefore decided to continue with the double track until the necessary measures have been put in place for a regular, single track system as was the case previously.

He reiterated that government is committed to phasing out the double track system in the next five to seven years.

Meanwhile, the first semester for the 2019/2020 academic year, will begin on September 16, 2019, for the Green Track students for both the first and second-year students, who will be in school until November 7, 2019.

They will resume on January 6, 2020, and be in school until February 28, 2020, when the first semester would have ended.

For the Gold Track students, they will begin their first semester on November 12, 2019, through to February 28, 2020.

Final year students, however, will be reporting to school for the first semester on August 19, 2019 until December 20, 2019, when they would have ended their first semester. They are scheduled to be back in school on March 2, 2020, up to June 10, 2020, before the commencement of the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) which begins on July 10, 2020.