2020 WASSCE: Providing students PASCO caused high expectation - Addae-Mensah

A former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah has blamed the disappointment being expressed by final year SHS students after their WASSCE paper on the provision of past questions by the education ministry to students.

According to him, Senior High Schools over the years have prepared their students using past questions but the education ministry going the extra mile to provide the past questions to all students across the nation heightened expectations among the students.

“Teachers know how to handle students in this situation, the students themselves from time immemorial use past questions… immediately you take this phenomenon out of the hands of the schools and you try and micromanage it from the educational authorities, you create a certain expectation in the students and I believe that something of the sort may have happened.

“If the revision process had been left in the hands of the teachers and the students, maybe this expectation might not have been generated,” Prof. Addae-Mensah said Saturday on Analyses on Starr FM.

His comments come after a reporter with the Daily Graphic in Koforidua, Damalie Emmanuel Pacome, was attacked by students of Bright Senior High School in Akyem Kukurantumi.

The students holding knives, cutlasses, sticks and stones chased the journalist who was in the school to verify reports of attacks on invigilators by the students.

Similarly, the students also clashed with invigilators over alleged intimidation.

Several students in other schools have also attacked the president for providing them with questions which did not appear in their final exams.

On Friday the Ghana Education Service (GES) dismissed some 14 final year students who are believed to have caused chaos and destroyed properties in their respective schools in the wake of the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

The GES in a statement said the action is to serve as deterrent for other students who are still partaking in the exams.

Meanwhile, the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) has relocated its examination centre from the premises of Bright Senior High School to the Ofori Panin Senior High School following the student riot that occurred at the centre on Thursday.

WAEC in a statement also noted it will not hesitate to sanction students and teachers of the school if they are found culpable in the rioting at their premises. Final year students of the school who are writing their exams on Thursday attacked an invigilator and a reporter over claims that supervision was strict during the exams. They were reportedly instigated by the proprietor of the school.