President Mahama has denied reports of a new policy by the Ghana Education Service introducing Arabic or Chinese into the curriculum for public schools in Ghana.
He said the Cabinet he chairs as President has not made any such decision.
President Mahama was speaking in Wa during his Upper West Resetting Ghana Tour on September 12.
“Let me disabuse your minds. There is absolutely no new policy that says that Arabic and Chinese are going to be introduced in our school curriculum. I chair cabinet, and I can tell you no new curriculum has come for approval by cabinet,” he assured.
According to him, “Cabinet approves the curriculum. If there’s a curriculum that is making changes to the subjects that are taught to our children, it will come to the cabinet before it becomes official policy. And so those who are going around and saying, Arabic is going to be introduced, Chinese is going to be introduced, I want to say with all emphasis as President of the Republic of Ghana that no such policy has been approved by the cabinet that I chair.”
President Mahama stated further that, “We’re surrounded by French-speaking countries. We’re not even getting a handle on the teaching of French. Why would we go and introduce Chinese? Where are we even going to get Chinese teachers? Even French teachers are hard to find.
Where are we going to get Chinese teachers? We have to send planes to China and fly them down to come and teach our children French. There is training of Arabic teachers because in Rawlings’ time, we noticed that the Muslim communities were not sending their children to school. And they were not sending their children to school because they were afraid that their children would be converted to some other religion.”
The Controversy
In July 2026, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) presented a revised curriculum for KG to Primary 6 to Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu. NaCCA Director-General Prof. Samuel Ofori Bekoe said the revision covers 13 subject areas.
Part of the proposal listed Chinese, Arabic, French, German and Italian as foreign languages to be introduced earlier – from Primary 1 instead of Primary 4. NaCCA said Chinese was proposed because “Ghana’s major trading partner is China” and Arabic needed a standardized curriculum.
The Viral Claim
Social media reports then claimed government was making Arabic and Chinese compulsory in all public basic schools. This triggered huge backlash from parents, religious leaders and civil society. Some pastors argued it was an ideological imposition and that Ghana should focus on English, French and Ghanaian languages.
Official Clarifications
The Ministry of Education issued several statements on August 2 and 13, 2026 to calm tensions:
– Ghanaian languages remain the main medium of instruction from KG to Primary 3.
– From Primary 4 to 6, instruction will be bilingual – Ghanaian languages + English.
- French, Arabic, Chinese are NOT compulsory. They are optional, and will only be offered in schools that have qualified teachers and resources.
– The standardized Arabic curriculum was to regulate what was already being taught in English-Arabic schools, a system introduced under Rawlings to get Muslim children into formal school without fear of conversion. It was not to impose Islam.
Minister Haruna Iddrisu himself said on August 9 at Pope John SHS: “There is no intention or attempt by government to make Arabic and Chinese compulsory at any level.”
