106 students Had No Assessment Records

Page 11
08-05-09

ALL the 106 Junior High School students of Christ the King International School in Kumasi who were not registered by their school to write this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) did not have continuous assessment records.
Continuous assessment of students is done over a period of three years, hence if the candidates had been allowed to write the examinations, they would not have met the criteria for the award of West African Examinations Council (WAEC) certificates.
In view of this, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has put in place arrangements for the candidates to re-sit the BECE, by filling the resit registration forms in their former schools where their continuous assessments could be obtained.
A report on the response of the GES, made available to the Daily Graphic on the public outcry over the inability of the affected students to write their BECE said these measures were part of efforts by the GES to make the students write their examination next year.
The report said investigations carried out by the GES revealed that “almost all the candidates were either re-sitters or form two pupils, who by the WAEC regulations did not qualify to write the examination, but wanted to write it without going through JHS Three.”
“In addition to these complications, it said, the affected candidates had not been captured in the computer software for re-selection of schools which was done a few days before the commencement of the 2008/2009 BECE, and that even if they had qualified for selection and placement, their data would not have been captured for the computerised placement into senior high schools.
The document said although the GES could not be held responsible for illegal acts committed by unscrupulous individuals who acted outside the laws and regulations of the service, it was “very much alive to its responsibilities to protect the rights of children”.
Each of the 106 pupils had been asked to look for a school of their choice and inform the Metropolitan Director of Education to assist them to gain admission to prepare them for the 2009/10 BECE examinations.
In a brief background of the school, it said, the Christ the King International School was established and given approval in 1987 with registration number AR/KM/17/PR/J007, and that the first batch of the then junior secondary school (JSS) students wrote the BECE in 1990.
During the 2007/08 BECE registration for instance, the report said the Metropolitan Directorate registered candidates of the School, but the proprietor delayed in paying registration fees for the students.
“The Metropolitan Examinations Coordinator and a team therefore visited the school to ascertain why the school could not pay the registration fees for the students. It was detected that the whole school had folded up, leaving only the JHS students as their last batch of students who had to be registered for the 2007/2008 BECE examinations,” the report said.
The document said in order not to jeopardise the future of the children by the school’s inability to pay their registration fees therefore, the Metropolitan Education Office came to the aid of the school by paying the BECE registration fees for the students which the proprietor refunded on April 18, 2008 and receipt duly issued.
It said when the Metropolitan Directorate of Education requested for the enrolment figures for all JHS Two pupils in the Kumasi metropolis in respect of the 2008/2009 BECE registration, the school did not submit any enrolment figures for registration.
This was expected because the school did not have any pupils in JHS Two because it had already registered its last batch of JHS Three students the previous year, the report explained, adding that as a result, the name of the school did not appear on the 2008/2009 list sent to the WAEC head office in Accra, resulting in the school not receiving any centre number in respect of the examination.
Upon hearing of the predicament of the 106 pupils, it said, the Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, directed the GES to do everything possible to enable the affected candidates to write the examination.
The report said it was at a meeting with the WAEC Branch Controller in Kumasi that it was detected that WAEC did not have any data on the 106 candidates, and that “it was impossible to organise the necessary logistics for a possible quarantine of the candidates because of the time frame and the number of candidates involved”.
“It was at this juncture that our enquiry revealed that the school had folded up and been de-recognised the previous year. What the proprietor sought to do was to organise registration for candidates from different remedial schools in the Kumasi Metropolis to enable them write the examination in his school when the school had no centre number for the 2008/2009 examinations” the document stated.
It said the Ministry of Education had guidelines for the setting up of private schools, and charged proprietors to satisfy the guidelines before applying for GES certificate of registration.