Review policy of resitting BECE

14-09-09
Page 11


A LECTURER at the University of Cape Coast, Mr Kingsley Adjei, has called for a review of the current policy of re-sitting the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
He noted that the current re-sit policy under which a candidate who did not perform well was supposed to re-write all the papers he/she wrote, including those he/she passed in and go back to his/her former school to re-sit the examination was a disincentive to candidates.
“It is time the current policy is reviewed to make candidates re-write only subjects they did not perform in and re-write those papers not necessarily in their former schools,” he told the Daily Graphic.
For instance, he said under the current re-sit policy it would be difficult for candidates whose parents have relocated or have been transferred to go back to their former schools to re-sit the examination, adding that the stigma attached to going back to one’s former school to re-write was not good enough for children.
With the current re-sit policy, if a candidate scores one in all subjects and scores six in any of the core subjects; Mathematics, English, Science or Social Studies, he/she is not qualified for placement into senior high school and technical institute under the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).
Under the guidelines for placement a candidate has to get a minimum score of grade five in all the core subjects, namely English, Mathematics, General Science and Social Studies, and in any two best subjects. This should give a candidate a minimum of aggregate 30 to get placement.
However, if a candidate scores grade six in any or both of the two best subjects, the candidate should have a grade better than five in any of the core subjects to qualify for placement.
Mr Adjei said with the continuous assessment records of candidates already available from the first sitting, a new system should be adopted to enable the students to re-write only subjects or papers they did not do well in and be made to re-write in any school of their choice.
Mr Adjei said it should also be possible to have a private BECE examination similar to that of the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) November-December private candidates examination.
He blamed the poor performance of candidates at the BECE level on parental or family neglect, poor supervision, the lack of teachers and the lack of motivation for teachers, among other things.
He explained that the failure of parents and guardians to pay attention to the academic activities of their children and wards did not encourage them (children and wards) to take their studies seriously.
Mr Adjei said some parents did not only fail to show up at their children’s school to find out from teachers how their children were performing, saying that the parents did not attend parent-teacher association (PTA) meetings and other meetings, and then in the end blamed teachers for the inability of their children to pass.
Teachers too, he said, shared in the blame as some of them idled about as a result of poor supervision on the part of Ghana Education Service (GES) officials.
The inadequacy of teachers in the rural areas, he said, was also another contributory factor to the poor performance of candidates, and stressed the need for more qualified teachers to be sent to such areas.
Mr Adjei called for what he termed a comprehensive rural development programme under which deprived areas would not only be provided with teaching and learning materials, but school infrastructure, roads, water and electricity to encourage teachers to go to those areas.
“Conditions of service of teachers should not only be about salaries. It should be about the provision of facilities that would enable them to deliver,” he said.
He expressed concern about the shortcut to riches and indicated that the practice had resulted in students engaging in cyberfraud, known locally also as sakawa, to get rich quick to the detriment of their education.
Mr Adjei indicated that some students no longer took their education seriously, especially having realised that some non-educated or semi-literate persons were rich.