Mahama’s claim on how R.M.E. subject is taught in schools false

On Tuesday, March 12, 2024, former president John Dramani Mahama said that Religious and Moral Education (RME) is lost in the education curriculum.

He said this at the Assemblies of God Church in Tema during his meeting with some church leaders as part of his Building Ghana Tour. Responding to a question about morals and patriotism, John Mahama stated that RME is now a component of the Social Studies subject therefore there is a need to expand the study of RME.

Fact-Check Ghana has verified the claim and presents the findings as follows.

Claim: “Now R.M.E is lost in the curriculum, you can’t even find where it is. When you ask they say it’s part of social studies. You have to go and search in Social Studies to look for where some small chapters of RME have been put in. I think we must expand the study of RME.”

Verdict: False

Explanation:

Religious and Moral Education, commonly known as RME, is a subject taught at the basic education level. According to the National Pre-tertiary Education Curriculum Framework, students from Primary 1-6 and Junior High School (JHS) 1-3 study RME with an allocated time of 3 periods on the academic timetable.

In 2019, the Ghana Education Service, in collaboration with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), rolled out the Standard Based Curriculum, a new curriculum to address the challenges with the existing Objective Based Curriculum and ensure that educational content is standardised.

NaCCA developed a basic school curriculum which included the following subjects: English, Mathematics, Science, History, Creative Arts, Our World Our People and Physical Education.

Our World Our People (OWOP) was a subject introduced in the new curriculum. It comprised Religion and Moral Education, Agriculture, Geography, Physical Education and Computing for lower primary students (P1-P3) and Religion and Moral Education, Agriculture, Geography, and Civics for upper primary students (P4-P6).

Fact-Check Ghana’s search showed that after stakeholder engagements on the Standard Based Curriculum, NaCCA rescinded its decision to make RME a subject theme under Our World Our People. Subsequently, an RME curriculum was developed for basic and Junior High Schools, making RME a stand-alone subject taught at the basic school level.

Fact-Check Ghana also spoke to Director General of NaCCA, Prof. Edward Appiah, who confirmed that RME has been a stand-alone subject since the new curriculum was introduced and no component of RME can be found in Social Studies or Our World Our People.

In conclusion, the claim by John Mahama that RME subject is lost in the curriculum and can be found in chapters of social studies is false.