President of Ashesi University, Dr Patrick Awuah
The President of Ashesi University, Dr Patrick Awuah, is calling for the establishment of more senior high schools to accommodate a large number of students from the basic level as part of measures to progressively phase out and eventually eliminate the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
This, he believed, would help address the problem of examination leakages at the basic level, where candidates have to compete for limited admission spots in the nation’s few senior high schools.
Dr Awuah told Class News’s Ekow Annan in an interview on Thursday 7 April 2016 that senior high schools (SHSs) are a point of transition into tertiary education, and, therefore, many students should be able to make it to that level.
“We have to build a lot more high schools than what we have done to date, a lot more than what is being talked about politically, so that every child will have the ability to go all the way through to SHS without the need for the BECE. And when we get to that capacity, we can even get rid of the BECE and it will save people the grief and pressures [on them] to cheat at that young age,” Dr Awuah suggested.
He said such a system would also eliminate the time students spend sitting in the house while awaiting their examination results after writing the BECE.
He also questioned the effectiveness of Ghana’s education systems suggesting there must be a change in the present situation where “students learn by rote” to a more practical way, where students can be trained to think beyond what is presented in the classrooms.
To him, assessments should be done within schools, while students, who are academically weak, can be offered extra attention, so many of them pass to the SHS level.
“These tests should be happening within the schools. You should be testing children between Class 1 and Class 2, and should be making decisions if someone does not do so well, for them to get extra attention. We should get on the path of getting as many students to be successful year by year,” he added.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) sacked two employees over various roles they played which resulted in the leakage of five papers during the 2015 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
