Teacher truancy - The cause of poor performance of students
Participants in an educational forum to address the poor performance of students in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the Northern Region have identified teacher absenteeism and the attitude of some teachers not to teach when present at school as major challenges contributing to the mass BECE failures in public schools in the region.
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The participants who included district directors of education, School Management Committees (SMCs), parent-teacher associations (PTAs), civil society organisations (CSOs) and some youth groups, therefore, called for increased supervision and monitoring in schools to reverse the trend.
They also urged the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to make funds available to organise mock examinations for BECE candidates as part of efforts to better prepare them for the actual examination to improve performance.
Statistics
Information sourced from the Northern Regional Education Directorate indicated that the region had been among the last three and sometimes at the bottom of the BECE league table for the 10 regions in the country for the past 10 years, while statistics also indicated that the average pass rate of BECE candidates in the region was at 40 per cent compared to the national figure of 50 per cent.
Forum
The forum, organised by the League of Youth Association and the Sagnarigu Youth Coalition in collaboration with the Youth Employment for Life (YEfL) and Centre for Active Learning and Integrated Development (CALID) under the Promoting Youth Representation and Citizen Engagement project, was funded by IBIS, Ghana.
It was to discuss the poor BECE performance among students in public basic schools in the region.
Other issues identified at the forum included lateness to school by teachers and teachers leaving school before closing hours, the refusal of students to attend school regularly after they have been registered for the BECE and the lack of interest by parents in the education of their children.
Speaking at the forum held in Tamale last Thursday, the Northern Regional Director of Education, Alhaji Mohammed Haroon, bemoaned the mass failure rate in the BECE in public schools in the region for the past 10 years and called on all key stakeholders in education to come together and work to reverse the trend.
He said another issue that should be the concern of all was the high drop-out rate among girls at the primary level before they move to the junior high school (JHS) level, adding that some even further dropped out before they wrote the BECE and called for a concerted effort to address the situation to ensure the attainment of gender parity at all levels of education in the region.
Allocation of resources
The Northern Regional Minister, Mr Salifu Sa-eed, in a speech read on his behalf, gave an assurancen that the government would continue to provide the needed resources to improve education in the region and called on parents to also support the education of their children.
Discouragement
The President of the League of Youth Associations, Mr Abu Inusah, for his part said the poor performance at the BECE over the years had affected the lives of most of the youth, adding that the current crop of youth within that education bracket were discouraged by the situation.
The Project Officer of YEfL, Mr Clement Boateng, said the youth groups would engage the regional planning committee to factor the issues identified at the forum in the medium-term development plan to be developed and implemented from 2018 to 2021 to improve education outcomes in the region.
