No plan to make Arabic compulsory in schools – Education Ministry

The Ministry of Education has dismissed reports suggesting that the government intends to make the teaching of Arabic compulsory for students in Ghana’s public schools, describing the claims as misinformation and a misconception of the government’s education policy.

The Ministry said there is no policy or directive requiring Ghanaian students to study Arabic as a compulsory subject.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, the Press Secretary to the Minister for Education, Hashmin Mohammed, explained that the government’s ongoing development of a standardised Arabic curriculum is intended to regulate and improve the teaching of the language in schools where it is already offered.

The Ministry stressed that the curriculum development process predates the appointment of Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu and was initiated about four years ago through a review of the Arabic curriculum at the senior high school level.

According to the Ministry, Arabic has been taught for decades in English-Arabic and Islamic schools across Ghana.

However, there had previously been no officially approved and standardised curriculum applicable to the various schools offering the language.

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) therefore developed a standardised Arabic language curriculum as part of its mandate to provide structure, consistency and quality assurance in teaching and learning.

The Ministry said the curriculum is primarily intended for schools where Arabic is already taught, as well as public primary schools that may voluntarily decide to introduce the language in the future.

It emphasised that the initiative was not designed to make Arabic a mandatory subject for pupils generally.

The Education Ministry also sought to draw a distinction between the teaching of Arabic as a language and religious education.

It said the fact that Arabic is widely used in Islamic religious contexts should not lead to the assumption that teaching the language amounts to promoting or imposing Islam.

“Arabic is a language, not a religion. The teaching and learning of Arabic should therefore not be misconstrued as the promotion or imposition of any religious belief.”

The Ministry said Arabic remains an optional subject in Ghana’s public schools, in the same way as French and other foreign languages apart from English.

The Ministry explained that hundreds of Islamic schools across Ghana already teach Arabic, largely in response to the educational and linguistic needs of the communities they serve.

It said the lack of a common curriculum had resulted in individual schools using their own approaches to teaching the language.

The standardised curriculum is therefore expected to establish a more consistent framework for teaching Arabic while improving quality assurance and learning outcomes.

The Ministry reiterated that the initiative is not a personal policy of Haruna Iddrisu, noting that the curriculum review and development process began years before he assumed office.

The clarification follows public discussions and concerns surrounding the role of Arabic in Ghana’s education system, particularly after the development of the standardised curriculum by NaCCA.

The Ministry urged the public, media practitioners and other stakeholders to verify claims about government education policies through authoritative sources before sharing them.

It warned that misinformation on sensitive issues could create unnecessary fear, misunderstanding and religious tension.

The Ministry maintained that the development of a standardised Arabic curriculum should be understood as an effort to improve the quality and consistency of language education, rather than an attempt to impose Arabic or any religious belief on Ghanaian students.