Celebrating academic excellence: Focus on WAEC Distinction Award
The development of every country depends on the quality of its education. Quality and relevant education equips individuals of a country with knowledge, ideas, attitudes, values, experiences, customs and skills needed to promote the country’s socio-economic development.
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Motivational theory
In order to boost quality educational outcomes, academic awards given to students who excel emanate from motivation theories.
Motivational theories help individuals to discover what drives them and also give credence and understanding to what motivates people to do whatever they do to achieve their goals.
Motivation is a force, which pushes a person to work with a high level of commitment and focus even if things are against him.
It is broadly classified under intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Academic achievement award is an extrinsic type of motivation given to students.
Awards and Personalisation Association outlined reasons why academic awards were presented to students such as to create in winners the spirit of recognition to inspire others and reinforce the behaviour that led to the reward.
Also, to increase the level of self-confidence of students as well as a sense of accomplishment and respect among the peer group.
WAEC Distinction Award
WAEC is West Africa’s foremost examining board comprising five member countries in the West African sub-region.
It conducts the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school and private candidates in all member countries and awards certificate.
The WAEC Distinction and Excellence Award is an initiative of the WAEC Endowment Fund (WEF).
The WEF provides funds for awards to candidates with outstanding performance in the council’s examinations at the SHS level.
It is held annually to reward the top performers in the previous year’s WASSCE for school candidates. By the tenets of the criteria for the awards, only candidates with a minimum of eight Grade A1s without any hint of impropriety are eligible for consideration.
The raw scores of the eligible candidates are standardised using T-score and the T-scores of the eligible candidates are ranked to select the three best candidates with the highest T-scores. In the event of a tie, the T-scores of the candidates in their common subjects (English Language and Mathematics) are used to break the tie.
Excellence Awardees
In recent times, the Distinction awardees in Ghana have been dominant recipients of the Excellence Awards.
Twenty-six candidates out of the 30 recipients of the Excellence Awards within the last 10 years were Ghanaians.
These award winners were produced by 14 SHSs including Wesley Girls’ High School, Mfantsipim Senior High School, Holy Child Senior High School, Aburi Girls’ Senior High School, Accra Academy, Achimota Senior High School, Ghana Senior High/Tech School, Hope College, Keta Senior High School, Notre Dame Seminary/ Senior High School, St Augustine’s College, St Francis Xavier Junior Seminary/SHS, St James Seminary/ Senior High School, PRESEC Legon and Yaa Asantewaa Girls’ SHS.
These schools might have put in place measures that support academic success and total development of the students, which have eventually produced Distinction and Excellence Award winners.
The best practices and experiences of these schools could inspire other schools to improve upon their situation.
Factors responsible for excellence
High academic achievement is a prerequisite to qualify for an award which is grounded on school, student and home factors.
The school exhibits certain characteristics to enhance the academic performance of students in the SHSs. Research has shown that adequate school facilities provide a positive educational climate suitable for student learning.
In other words, there is a positive relationship between the school environment and academic achievement.
Good school environment with facilities such as adequate classrooms, well-stocked libraries, dormitories, science and ICT laboratories, recreational facilities, good lighting system among others support academic work.
This implies that the school authorities, teachers and other stakeholders must provide the needed support for students to succeed academically.
Teacher commitment is another factor that promotes students’ academic performance and positions them as recipients for national and international awards.
Teacher commitment is a motivational force that inspires teachers to invest more time and energy in student achievement. Teachers with high level of commitment also motivate students to involve themselves in school and learning activities to ensure academic achievement.
This situation leads to positive teacher-student relationship which is also good for academic work. Teacher commitment thrives in a democratic school climate, comfortable instructional environment and good conditions of service among others.
Students should be disciplined and must take advantage of the academic environment created for them at school and home and work hard to achieve laurels.
Students can enhance their academic performance when they themselves are abreast of academic matters such as course outlines and take initiatives in academic activities like presentations, quizzes and assignments.
Way forward
The Ghana Education Service (GES), school authorities, old students’ associations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should help provide well-equipped facilities in schools.
The GES and other well-meaning organisations should regularly hold in-service training for classroom teachers including the requisite conditions of service.
School authorities should intensify the supervision of classroom teachers as well as request reports on the progress of students in the various subjects.
Teachers and parents should encourage students to develop positive attitude towards intensive academic work. Subject teachers in the schools should be motivated to give extra attention to the teaching of slow learners.
The writer is a research fellow
Email: [email protected]
