Minister for Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has announced that Ghana’s National Standardized Test will adopt a cohort-based assessment model that tracks the same group of learners from Primary Two through Primary Four and Primary Six to measure their academic progress over time.

Speaking during a tour of Osu St. Peter’s RC Basic School and Osu Salem 1 KG and Primary School to assess the conduct of this year’s National Standardized Test, the Minister said the new approach marks a significant shift from previous assessment cycles, where different groups of pupils were tested at each stage.

“We will begin with learners in Primary Two, and rather than testing different groups of learners during each assessment cycle, the same cohort of learners should be followed through from Primary Two to Primary Four and Primary Six so that we can measure the progress of that cohort over the years before they write the BECE,” he said.

According to Mr. Iddrisu, the approach will enable the Ministry of Education to gather more reliable evidence on learners’ development and determine how much progress individual cohorts make throughout their basic education.

This year’s assessment targets 2,500 Kindergarten Two (KG2) learners, 4,500 Primary Two pupils, 4,500 Primary Four pupils and 4,500 Primary Six pupils across the country.

The Minister said the data generated from the assessments will support evidence-based policymaking and help improve learning outcomes, particularly in foundational literacy and numeracy.

During his interaction with pupils, Mr. Iddrisu observed that while many learners correctly identified Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as Ghana’s first President, several struggled to state the year Ghana attained independence.

He described the observation as an indication that greater attention should be paid to the teaching of history at the basic school level.

“My takeaway from today is that we have to improve the teaching of history in our basic schools. The question is not simply how learners perform today, but how much this same group of learners improves over time,” he noted.

The National Standardized Test forms part of Ghana’s broader education assessment reforms and is implemented under the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP). Introduced in 2021, the assessment is designed to measure foundational skills in literacy and numeracy among pupils in basic schools. Unlike high-stakes examinations, the test is intended to provide data on learning outcomes to help government identify gaps, improve teaching and learning, and guide policy interventions across the education sector.