GES CANCELS NOVEMBER MID-TERM BREAK FOR BASIC SCHOOLS TO RECOVER LOST TEACHING TIME

The Ghana Education Service has cancelled the two-day mid-term break that basic schools across the country were scheduled to observe on Thursday, November 5, and Friday, November 6, 2026, directing all such schools to remain open and conduct normal academic activities on both days. The decision, announced in a notice signed by Daniel Fenyi of GES Headquarters, is intended to recover instructional hours lost during a recent industrial action by pre-tertiary teachers that disrupted classroom teaching for nearly two weeks.

The notice states that all basic schools are expected to open and continue regular lessons on the two dates that had been set aside for the break. Teachers, pupils, parents, guardians and the general public have been advised to take note of the change and make the necessary arrangements. The Service has appealed for cooperation and continued commitment to quality education as schools work to restore continuity in the academic programme. The cancellation applies nationwide to basic schools and does not alter other elements of the published 2026/2027 academic calendar beyond these two specific days.

The industrial action that prompted the change began on Friday, September 25, 2026. It was declared by three pre-tertiary teacher unions: the Ghana National Association of Teachers, the National Association of Graduate Teachers, and the Pre-Tertiary Teachers Association of Ghana. The unions cited outstanding issues concerning promotions, unpaid salary arrears, allowances (including the deprived-area allowance), and conditions of service. The action kept many teachers out of classrooms until it was suspended on Friday, October 9, following engagements with the Ministry of Labour, Jobs and Employment, the Council of State, and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission. Union leaders directed members to return to work on Monday, October 12, while indicating that negotiations on remaining matters would continue. Under the commitments reached at the time, promotion-related arrears were expected to be paid to a substantial number of teachers by mid-October, with further payments and certain allowances scheduled for later dates. Some union representatives emphasised that the suspension did not mean all issues had been fully resolved.

The disruption lasted roughly two weeks and affected public basic schools nationwide. Instructional time is a finite resource within any academic term. The first term of the 2026/2027 academic year opened on September 8 and is scheduled to run for 15 weeks before closing in mid-December. A two-day mid-term break had been built into the official calendar for November 5 and 6, consistent with the Service’s stated practice of including a short mid-term break in each term. When that break is removed, the two days become available for ordinary teaching and learning. School heads and teachers are therefore expected to use the period for regular lessons rather than for rest or for other non-instructional activities. Some schools had already begun organising additional early-morning or late-afternoon sessions after teachers returned in October; the cancellation of the mid-term break provides a further, centrally directed opportunity to address the shortfall without extending the term or adding weekend instruction.

The practical effects fall on several groups. Pupils who had planned travel, family visits or rest during the two days will instead be in school. Parents and guardians who had arranged childcare or other commitments around the expected break will need to adjust. Teachers, many of whom returned to work only weeks earlier after the industrial action, will deliver lessons on days that had been designated as non-instructional. For school administrators the change is relatively straightforward: the published calendar is amended by a single notice, and normal attendance and lesson delivery resume. The Service has framed the measure as a necessary step to protect the integrity of the academic calendar and to limit the cumulative impact of the lost days on curriculum coverage, particularly in subjects that require sequential teaching.

Instructional time in basic education is closely linked to learning outcomes. When consecutive days are lost, topics that were scheduled for that period must be compressed, postponed or covered more rapidly later. In systems that already face challenges of large class sizes, limited teaching materials and uneven teacher distribution, the recovery of even two days can matter for pacing. The Ghana Education Service manages the national calendar for basic schools and has the authority to adjust specific dates when circumstances require it. In this instance the adjustment is narrow: only the November mid-term break is affected. Public holidays that fall within the term continue to be observed, and the overall term length and vacation dates remain as previously published. The Basic Education Certificate Examination timetable for the following year is likewise unchanged by this notice.

The decision also sits within the wider context of teacher conditions and industrial relations in the pre-tertiary sector. The unions’ grievances centred on delays in placing promoted staff on appropriate salary scales, the non-payment of certain allowances, and the need to update expired conditions of service. The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission and other government agencies engaged with the unions and reached agreements that allowed the strike to be suspended. Those agreements included timelines for specific payments. Whether the subsequent payments and further negotiations fully address the underlying issues will determine the stability of the school calendar in the months ahead. For the moment, the Service has chosen to reclaim two instructional days rather than leave the shortfall unrecovered or to seek recovery through other means such as weekend classes or an extended term.

Parents and guardians who have not yet seen the notice will need to ensure that children attend on November 5 and 6. Teachers will need to prepare lessons for those days as they would for any ordinary school day. School heads will need to communicate the change clearly to their staff and to parents. The Service has expressed appreciation for cooperation and has underlined the shared interest in quality education. The measure is administrative rather than punitive; it restores two days of teaching that the industrial action removed. Its success will depend on actual attendance by both teachers and pupils and on the effective use of the recovered time for instruction.

What is confirmed is the cancellation of the November 5 and 6 mid-term break for basic schools, the requirement that schools conduct normal academic activities on those dates, the stated purpose of recovering instructional hours lost during the industrial action that began on September 25 and was suspended on October 9, and the identity of the official who signed the notice. What remains a matter of local implementation is how individual schools organise the additional teaching days and whether any further adjustments to the calendar become necessary later in the term. The Service has not announced changes to other scheduled breaks or to the overall structure of the 2026/2027 academic year. The two recovered days therefore represent a limited but concrete step toward restoring continuity after a period of disruption.

The cancellation illustrates the tension that can arise between the need to protect instructional time and the realities of industrial action in a large public education system. When teachers withdraw their labour for legitimate reasons related to pay and conditions, the immediate cost is measured in days of learning that pupils do not receive. Restoring those days requires decisions that affect the expectations of families and the workloads of teachers. In this case the Ghana Education Service has chosen to reclaim the mid-term break that had been written into the calendar months earlier. The choice keeps the rest of the term intact while returning two days to the classroom. Whether that choice is sufficient to offset the broader effects of the nearly two-week interruption will be visible only in the pace of curriculum coverage and in the preparedness of pupils as the term progresses toward its December close.