RME to be re-introduced

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March 11, 2008

Religious and Moral Education (RME) is to be re-introduced as a separate subject at the basic education level with effect from the next academic year, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports has announced.
The sector Minister, Prof Dominic Fobih, who made this known in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said the Curriculum Research and Development Division (CRDD) of the ministry was working with the religious bodies to develop the syllabus for the subject.
He said RME was not abolished under the educational reform but integrated into other subjects, adding, “It will now be made to stand on its own.”
According to him, the ministry was open to suggestions from the public on issues about education, saying, “We are a listening ministry.”
The Catholic Bishops Conference, in a communiqué issued in Kumasi in November last year after its meeting, called on the government to re-introduce RME as a subject, instead of a concept, in the school curriculum.
According to the Bishops, “sidelining religion and morality from education is tantamount to condemning the human person to a lack of means to develop himself or herself fully to be a human being in the society”.
The position of the Bishops attracted other voices concerning the non-inclusion of RME in the school curriculum, particularly from the Christian and Muslim communities.
Following the outcry over the matter, President Kufuor directed the ministry to facilitate a dialogue among the stakeholders of the educational sector to resolve the controversy over the teaching of the subject.
As a result, a 29-member committee, under the chairmanship of Prof Anamuah-Mensah, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba, was convened at the instance of the sector minister to take a second look at the teaching of RME as a subject at the basic level.
President Kufuor, in his Independence Day address, said the government had decided to revisit the reinstatement of RME on the school curriculum.
Prof Fobih said the ministry was going to carry out what the President had requested.