Senior High Schools to Begin Sandwich System in the 2018/2019 Academic Year

Senior High Schools to Begin Sandwich System in the 2018/2019 Academic Year. 

Senior High Schools shall from the 2018/19 Academic Year begin a sandwich system of Education known as the Double-Track School System. The Double-Track School Calendar is an Intervention that allows schools to accommodate more students into the school within the same facility and is mostly motivated by its ability to improve overcrowding situations as well as to save cost relative to the construction of a new facility.

Government has adopted the double-track (semester/sandwich) system in order to increase enrollment under its flagship  Free Senior High School Programme. This was revealed by Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh,  the Minister of Education at a sensitization programme organized for Metro/Municipal/District Directors of Education, Heads of Senior High School and Public Relation Officers of the Education Sector on the theme ‘No qualified child be left out’ on 21st July, 2018 at the Accra Girls Senior High School in Accra.

The new programme creates a calendar of two semesters in a year for the SHS 1 class containing 81 days per each semester and 41 days of vacation for a sandwich class.He further added that the new system will run in all the categories A and B Senior high schools in the country.A software has been developed to change the timetable to make room for the new system.

The Minister was optimistic that over 8,000 teachers are being recruited to handle the sandwich classes because teachers would not be deprived of their holidays.He claimed that the new system was an adoption and not invention since few countries including Kenyan, Japan, Costa Rica, Germany, Australia and United States are already running the system.

The new system reduces the current contact hours and so a remedial school is also instituted on Saturdays for English and Mathematics where government is committed to pay 50 Ghana cedis per student per semester as an academic intervention. Heads of schools would also be supported with incentives for supervision on Saturdays.

In all, a total of 323,061,739.00 is earmarked to cushion the remedial school for the year. The double-track system was proposed by Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, an educationist and a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Education Winneba, saying it is the best way to go.