It is standards-based rather than objective-based, emphasises critical thinking, creativity and problem solving, and changes both what is assessed and how often.
The rollout
NaCCA began consultative processes for the Key Phase 5 curriculum in 2022, developing separate but related curricula for senior high schools, senior high technical schools and STEM schools. The Ministry of Education rolled the curriculum out from November 2024 through NaCCA and GES.
NaCCA has framed the rationale in terms of global competency gaps — that graduates were arriving at university and at work needing retraining, and lacking competencies the labour market expects.
Structure
Reported features of the new senior high model include a subject load of roughly seven to nine subjects organised into groups, with a shared core for all learners and specialisation following the Common Core phase. Learners take a Common Core assessment at the end of SHS1 before specialising.
Structural detail has continued to develop through implementation. Confirm current subject groupings, progression rules and assessment arrangements with NaCCA, GES and WAEC rather than relying on any summary, including this one.
The assessment change is the harder part
The curriculum change is visible and much discussed. The assessment change is less discussed and considerably more demanding operationally.
Reported assessment components under the new model include group projects, individual portfolios, mid-semester and end-of-semester examinations, class and home exercises, and projects. At basic level, continuous class tests are being replaced by national standard assessments.
Read that list again from an administrator’s perspective. A school running six assessment types per subject per semester across a full senior high cohort is generating several times the assessment records it previously handled — and portfolios and group projects do not reduce to a mark in a mark book.
This is where most schools will struggle, and it is a records problem before it is a pedagogy problem.
What Edves provides
- Indicator-level mapping across SHS, SHTS and STEM curricula, tracked separately where they differ.
- Multiple assessment types on one record — portfolios, projects, examinations and exercises, each weighted to the school’s policy and all reporting against the same indicators.
- Portfolio evidence held against the learner rather than in a folder, with the assessment criteria attached.
- Group project records that distinguish individual contribution, which is the persistent weakness of group assessment everywhere.
- Semester structure configured to the school’s actual calendar.
- Coverage reporting that separates taught-and-assessed from taught-but-never-assessed.
- WASSCE analytics linked to the same indicators — see WASSCE.
TVET and technical provision
Senior high technical schools and TVET-oriented provision carry practical and competency assessment that a general academic record structure handles badly. Competency-based records — can do, cannot yet do, with evidence — are structurally different from a percentage, and Edves supports both rather than forcing practical assessment into an academic shape.
An honest note on teacher capacity
A new curriculum, a new assessment model and a substantially increased volume of assessment records arrived together, into schools whose teachers were already carrying full timetables. Any vendor presenting this as a straightforward software opportunity is not being straight with you.
Software reduces the marginal cost of each assessment record and removes the end-of-semester compilation exercise. It does not reduce the number of assessments the model requires. Schools should plan for the workload as well as the system.