WAEC: It's all over For BECE manual registration

Page: Frontpage, Jan 8, 2008
Story: Emmanuel Bonney
THE West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has phased out the manual registration of candidates for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE)
Consequently, more than 300,000 junior high school (JHS) candidates who are to take the examination in April this year have been successfully registered electronically.
The Head of the National Examination Administration Department of WAEC, Mr Kweku Nyamekye-Aidoo, who made this known to the Daily Graphic, said the computer registration or “batch registration” system had been introduced to, among other things, avoid the errors that were associated with the manual process.
He explained that computer registration was different from online registration, which required an Internet facility, adding that with the computer registration, a school needed a computer with a CD Rom.
He said with the introduction of computer registration, the use of pieces of paper, which made the registration process cumbersome, had been reduced, saying that “once paper work is reduced, there is more efficiency”.
Mr Nyamekye-Aidoo said the registration of the 2008 candidates had so far been successful, in spite of the initial fear that there would be problems as a result of the lack of computer facilities in some basic schools.
“We have cleared the fear of the unknown,” he said.
According to him, before the registration process, schools were asked to indicate whether they had computer facilities or not, after which the Ghana Education Service (GES) was duly notified.
He said the GES then asked the schools that did not have access to computers to use nearby senior high schools (SHS) and district assembly facilities for the registration.
Mr Nyamekye-Aidoo said apart from the reduction in the use of paper, computer registration would also help reduce errors, such as improper shading done by some candidates in the course of filling their BECE registration forms.
He said computer registration would help in the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), as candidates would be able to make more accurate selections, unless they themselves provided the wrong information.
He said under computer registration, each school was provided with three CDs for the registration exercise and that one CD contained the software for the registration, while another one was used to capture registration materials, photographs, among other things, and the third one for the submission of continuous assessment scores.
Mr Nyamekye-Aidoo appealed to schools to desist from registering unqualified candidates, adding that the BECE was for candidates who had gone through nine years of basic education and had their continuous assessment records or scores available.
He said WAEC, on its part, would remain vigilant to ensure that only qualified candidates wrote the examination.