GES unhappy with Yendi MCE’s decision : To prevent candidates from writing BECE
The Ghana Education Service (GES) is to probe the decision by the Yendi Municipal Assembly which prevented 12 registered final year junior high school (JHS) students from writing this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) due to absenteeism.
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According to the GES, once the students had been registered for the examination, there was no need to deny them their right.
“This is a very serious matter and we are going to look into it because you do not know why they absented themselves from school,” the Head of Public Relations of the GES, Reverend Jonathan Bettey, told the Junior Graphic.
According to the Yendi Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Alhaji Issah Zakaria, the decision not to allow the affected students to write the examination was taken by the assembly, together with the municipal education directorate, as a result of truancy on the part of the candidates.
It was alleged that the students were not attending classes regularly after they had been registered for the examination.
Reverend Bettey said: “When a candidate is registered for an examination, it means the candidate is qualified to write it, so with the denial of these candidates from writing the examination, the GES would have to find out why that happened.”
Asked when a child could be prevented from registering for the BECE, he said that was when the child did not attend school regularly or did not take part in mock examinations organised for the candidates, as well as poor academic performance.
“But if the child is able to attend classes, the child is able to write the mock examinations, take part in class tests and is registered for the BECE, then the child is qualified to write the examination,” he said.
The Head of National Examinations at the GES, Mr Richmond Ayite, said regional and district directors of education had been asked to submit situational reports on the BECE, and that it was after receiving those reports, which were supposed to be submitted in a week’s time, that the service could take action on any of those cases.
After a town hall meeting, the MCE explained that the decision of the assembly to prevent the students from writing the examination was also to serve as a deterrent to others who indulged in such acts and behaviours, pointing out that the decision by the municipal authorities formed part of measures to arrest the abysmal performance of students in the BECE.
The affected students, made up of 11 males and a female, were said to have attended classes for only 10 days while others were present for less than 20 days after registering for the BECE.
