- NaCCA Halts OWOP Withdrawal until 2025-2026 Academic Year.
- A new date has been released for the start of the withdrawal.
- What schools and parents have to do to ensure students have access to the books and study.
The National Council for Curriculum Assessment (NaCCA) has postponed its intended withdrawal of the Our World, Our People (OWOP) curriculum and its associated textbooks from the Basic School. The OWOP was one of the newly introduced curricula for KG to Basic 6 learners.
The Ghana Publishers Association (GPA) filed a petition in parliament challenging NaCCA’s decision to withdraw the curriculum, which prompted NaCCA to halt the OWOP withdrawal.
In a recent communiqué, NaCCA disclosed that it has postponed the subject’s withdrawal from the 2024-2025 academic year to the 2025-2026 academic year.
OWOP will continue to serve as additional reading material beyond the 2025-2026 academic year.
Following a series of crucial meetings, the GPA, NaCCA, and the committee on education of the Parliament of Ghana decided not to proceed with the OWOP withdrawal.
Before the introduction of the new curriculum in 2019, there was less time for publishers who had already invested in printing books based on the old curriculum to make good investment decisions. While others had new and old stocks of books they could no longer sell due to all of the sudden changes in curriculum, many lost their investments.
The decision to withdraw OWOP was foreseen as a similar evil, just as was the case when the new curriculum was introduced. The decision not to continue with the OWOP curriculum meant publishers who had invested in books for the new subject would suffer losses as schools would not buy the books they had published already.
The above was one of the reasons why the GPA called on parliament to intervene in the wrong timing of NaCCA’s decision to remove the OWOP from schools.
Following the meeting between the GPA, NaCCA, and the Education Committee of the Parliament of Ghana, the parties agreed on a new road map to guide the phasing out of the OWOP subject from the basic education system over a longer period of time.
The OWOP curriculum withdrawal’s new effective date is no longer the 2024-2025 academic year, which started on September 10, 2024.
All basic schools in Ghana will now teach the OWOP during the 2024–2025 academic year, and after that, they will use it as a supplementary reader.
The review would result in the incorporation of the strands and sub-strands from the OWOP into other subjects, even after the 2025-2026 academic year. The letter stated this. The above development means schools will have to update their book lists for parents and readjust their timetables to include the OWOP subject for KG to Basic 6 learners for the 2024-2025 school year.
NaCCA Halts OWOP Withdrawal: The full letter from NaCCA on the matter can be found below.
Notice of withdrawal of “our world, our people” from the primary school curriculum
I write in respect of the meeting with the Select Committee on Education of the Parliament of Ghana, pursuant to Article 103 of the 1992 constitution and Order 250 of the Standing Orders on Thursday, June 21, 2024, with the management of the National Council for Curriculum Development and Assessment and the leadership of the Ghana National Publishers Association (GPA).
This was in response to a petition lodged with the Committee by the GPA on the withdrawal of OWOP from the primary school curriculum.
After extensive deliberations, the meeting adopted the following road map.
- That is the effective date for the withdrawal of the Our World, Our People (OWOP) should be moved from the 2024-2025 academic year to the 2025-2026 academic year.
- That is, the textbook of OWOP would be used as supplementary reading material even after the 2025-2026 academic year. This is because the strands and sub-strands in the OWOP would be incorporated into other subjects as a result of the review.
- NaCCA should continue to extensively engage the leadership of the Ghana Publishers Association on the review and any proposed changes in the curriculum with respect to textbook development.
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In line with the above, I write to communicate the above roadmap to your outfit for further action.
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