A report from the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) on the 2011 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results revealed that, most of the students performed abysmally as compared to the previous years, leading to most students not being able to obtain admission into the Senior High Schools (SHS). According to the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) the performance for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) nationwide was poor, with most schools scoring below 50%. For instance, it was recorded that about seventy-seven (77) schools in the central region alone had zero percent (0%); this indeed is a very worrisome situation.

At the wake of this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) selections into the Senior High Schools (SHS), the chiefs and people in the areas where the secondary schools are located made a proposal to the Government to give 30% quota to their children who are qualify to enter the Senior High Schools (SHS) since the computer selection exercise normally does not favour their communities. The computer selection exercise which is seven years old, since its inception have been met with serious opposition this year due to the late release of the schools by the Computer Selection and Placement unit of the Ministry of Education. For example, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church have advocated for the abolishing of the computer selection exercise, according to them it is not genuine but rather it leads to bias and inconsistency in its selections, favouring only the students whose grade the computer picks at the expense of equally qualified students. The problem with this year’s computer selection exercise is that, it led to the late release of schools selected by candidates to the Heads of the Senior High Schools (SHS), which eventually affected the normal reporting date of students into the Senior High Schools (SHS). The late reporting of students to school means lost of days on the academic calendar.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES) need to review the SS 1 academic calendar for this year to make room for the lost days that students were in the house in order to complete the curriculum for the various programmes in the term.

However, due to the poor performance of the 2011 BECE, the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service have mounted up strategies to help improve upon the 2012 results for BECE. As part of the plan to help improve upon the 2012 results of BECE, the Ministry of Education in consultation with the Ghana Education Service have come out with a plan known as the 2:2:6 formation to help improve upon performance for 2012.

According to the Ministry of Education , to implement the 2:2:6 formation plan, they will need support from all the stakeholders in education such as parents, the Government and the other NGOs who are into educational issues. The 2:2:6 plan formation means extra hours tuition programme of 2hrs after close from school each day, and another 2hrs of study each morning before normal classes begins and on Saturdays students will spent 6hrs, which means the first 2hrs will be dedicated for revision and the 4hrs for actual teaching known as the 2:2:6 formation.

Again as part of the plans to help improve upon performance for 2012 BECE, parents were advised to help the teachers by guiding their children to study at home in the evenings. Teachers were also encourage to make maximum use of the their school hours since the extra classes idea are only complementary. Another major strategy in solving the issue of poor performance is to equip the schools with the require teachers to teach the students since they identify inadequate teachers in most Districts that performed poorly.

Also, the Heads of the Basic schools are expected to conduct series of mock examination to adequately prepare their final year JHS candidates. The approach in helping to improve upon performance for the 2012 BECE is a multi-sectoral one. Which involves the Ministries such as the Local Government and Rural Development , the Ministry of Education and other Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) among others.

BY: DANIEL OTSIN,
THE PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER,
BIRIM SOUTH DISTRICT EDUCATION DIRECTOR, AKIM SWEDRU.



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