The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has made a proposal to the Ministry of Education to introduce a new grading system for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
The new system, known as the Criterium Reference Grading, is the same system used for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
According to the Head of National Office of WAEC, Very Rev. Dr. Samuel Nii Nmai Ollennu, who was speaking to the Junior Graphic, the new system would ensure the tracking of the actual performance of candidates in the BECE for policy formulation.
He said if the proposal was accepted by the Ministry of Education, it would be used in addition to the current Stanine Grading System used for the BECE.
Very Rev. Dr. Ollennu explained that the new grading for the BECE would, therefore, be known as the Duo Reference System because it would use both the Stanine System (norm reference system) and the Criterium Reference Grading Systems.
He said the Stanine Grading System was very good for selection of candidates into senior high schools but was not good enough for monitoring the performance of students because with that no one could determine whether a candidate had failed or passed.
According to Very Rev. Ollenu, the system arranged candidates in some order of merit and only the user could decide who had passed or failed.
He added that the Stanine System could not be used to compare the performance of candidates between years but could only compare candidates within a year.
“What we are proposing is that we will still maintain the Stanine System and then give the Ghana Education Service the raw scores for the selection of candidates into senior high schools. However, we would now use the Criterium Reference Grading System to certify the candidates. That system is like what we are using for the WASSCE so that we can compare performances across the years.
“We want to use both so that while it will facilitate the selection process, as it is being done now, it will also provide the opportunity to track the actual performance of candidates so that we can give information to the ministry for policy formulation. The weaknesses and strengths of candidates would be better exposed for the needed interventions to be put in place to address them,” Very Rev. Ollennu said.
Asked whether such information could not be found in the Chief Examiners’ Report, he said, “those ones are narratives; they don’t go with statistics. For the BECE, it is norm reference so we can’t compare the statistics across the years.”
