The Institute for Education Studies (IFEST) has urged the government to maintain the double-track system in senior high schools (SHSs) for the next few years, saying a realistic timeline for its eventual elimination is 2030.

The Executive Director of IFEST, Dr Peter Anti, said the system remained necessary in the short term to address the pressure on available spaces in senior high schools while government continued to expand infrastructure and capacity across the sector.

He said that rather than immediately abolishing the double-track system, government should improve its implementation by integrating technology and strengthening online learning for students during periods when they are not physically in school.

According to Dr Anti, the increasing use of online classes, coupled with the distribution of tablets to students, provided an opportunity to address some of the challenges that accompanied the introduction of the double-track system in 2017.

He said the technology could help ensure students remained academically engaged at home, reducing concerns about learning gaps between the tracks.

“If you’re able to do that, then we can leverage on the double track for the next few years. As I said, the realistic time to eliminate the double track will be 2030. That’s what the STARR-J Project says,” he said.

Strengthen online learning

Dr Anti called for a major strengthening of the online learning system to make it a more effective component of senior high school education.

He said the success of online learning would depend on effective monitoring, adequate support for teachers and the provision of the resources and incentives required to enable them to conduct virtual classes effectively.

He noted that simply providing students with tablets would not be enough to guarantee meaningful learning, stressing the need for a system that ensured both teachers and students actively participated in online lessons.

Such an approach, he said, would help address concerns that students spent significant periods at home under the double-track arrangement without engaging in structured academic activities.

Dr Anti said teachers must be given the necessary support to prepare and deliver online lessons while schools and education authorities should put in place mechanisms to monitor participation and learning outcomes.

Parents have role

The IFEST Executive Director also urged parents to take greater responsibility for monitoring their children’s participation in online classes during their periods at home.

He said parental supervision was particularly important in ensuring that students used the periods outside the classroom for academic purposes rather than becoming disengaged from their studies.

Dr Anti said Ghana should therefore make greater use of technology to improve the effectiveness of the double-track system in the short term while government worked to expand the physical capacity of senior high schools.

He maintained that the ultimate objective should be to create sufficient infrastructure and capacity to enable the country to eventually eliminate the double-track system.

The double-track system was introduced in 2017 as part of efforts to accommodate increased enrolment under the Free Senior High School programme amid limited infrastructure and classroom capacity.

Dr Anti’s position suggests that while the system may remain necessary to manage current demand for SHS places, improved use of digital learning could help mitigate some of its educational disadvantages until the infrastructure required for a full transition to a single-track system is achieved.