The six NaCCA core competencies, and how to show them in a note

Every NaCCA lesson is meant to build more than a topic. Underneath the content sit six core competencies, the durable skills the curriculum wants learners to carry out of school. Naming them in a note is the easy part. The harder, and more useful, part is designing an activity that actually shows one, and writing it the way the curriculum writes it.

The six, and their letters

The curriculum prints each competency with a two-letter code in brackets, and every JHS subject document uses the same set:

• CP — Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• CI — Creativity and Innovation
• CC — Communication and Collaboration
• CG — Cultural Identity and Global Citizenship
• PL — Personal Development and Leadership
• DL — Digital Literacy

They are cited with numbers, not just letters

This is the detail most notes get wrong. The curriculum does not stop at the two letters. Each competency is broken into numbered sub-skills, and an indicator cites the specific one. In the B7 Science curriculum, the exemplars under B7.1.1.1.1 carry these:

• CI 5.2 — ability to merge simple or complex ideas to create novel situations or things
• CP 5.1 — ability to combine information and ideas from several sources to reach a conclusion
• CC 8.2 — explain ideas in a clear order with relevant details, using correct construction and structure of speech

So a real note's Core Competencies field reads CI 5.2, CP 5.1: CC 8.2, not a bare list of letters. The numbers come from the curriculum page the lesson is drawn from. If you are copying just the letters, you are dropping the half that says which skill you actually mean.

Evidencing each one

A competency you name and never demonstrate is the gap a vetter notices. Here is what an activity has to do for each.

CP · Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Use a task with more than one route to an answer, or a problem set in a real situation. A question that asks learners to explain why, or to choose between options and defend the choice, evidences it far better than one with a single fill-in answer.

CI · Creativity and Innovation

Give room to make something: a design, a different method, a solution the learner arrives at their own way. An activity whose verb is produce or invent is where this shows up. The curriculum's own wording is about merging ideas to create something novel, so a task that only reproduces a worked example will not carry it.

CC · Communication and Collaboration

Build in a think-pair-share, a group task with a shared output, or a moment where a learner presents to the class. If the lesson is teacher talk from start to finish, this one is only on paper.

CG · Cultural Identity and Global Citizenship

Anchor an example in the learner's own context, a Ghanaian market, a local practice, a community issue, then widen it. Connecting the topic to the world the learner lives in is the evidence here.

PL · Personal Development and Leadership

Hand over some responsibility: a group role, a self-check, a task the learner plans and follows through on. Anything that asks a learner to manage themselves or lead a small part of the work counts.

DL · Digital Literacy

Where the resources allow, fold in a search, a device, or a digital tool that does real work in the task. Real notes do use this: a B7 Science lesson on the importance of liquids has learners search the internet before presenting a report. Even planning how you would use a tool shows an awareness of it.

Where they sit on the page

Core Competencies is a header field, alongside Performance Indicator, in the block a vetter reads before any activity. It is not a section at the bottom. Whatever you name there has to be visible in the activities below, which is the whole test.

teache pulls the competencies from the indicator you are teaching and keeps them tied to the activities, so what you claim and what you print match. Every weekly lesson note is built that way, and the rest of what a vetter checks is worth reading alongside this. Draft a week and see.