WAEC withholds BECE certs. of visually impaired pupils

It has been one year since two visually impaired pupils from Three Kings Special School for the Blind in Avakpedome in the Central Tongu District of the Volta Region wrote the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), yet the West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC) has not released their results.

This has curtailed the dreams of the two – Eworse Happy and Veronica Aboagyewaa – from enrolling in any senior high school (SHS) to continue their education.

Class FM’s Volta regional correspondent, Emmanuel Atukpa, reported on Monday, June 13 that teachers from the respective schools of the students had indicated that all attempts to get the results had proved futile with no tangible explanation from officials of WAEC.

“When the results were released last year, the three students went to the schools of their choices but could not find their names,” the reporter said.

He explained that the two contacted their headmaster, Mr Maxwell Agbemavi, who followed up at WAEC but a year on the graduating students had not received their results.

Emmanuel explained that the two remained at home, a situation which had left their parents very worried.

The two are reported to be in a distressed condition as they told the reporter it was not their fault to be visually impaired and they did not understand why WAEC was discriminating against them.

The teachers in the school also felt discouraged as a similar situation had occurred previously, but WAEC released the results after several follow-ups.

Meanwhile, 461, 013 candidates from 14,267 public and private Junior High Schools are writing their final exams starting Monday, June 13, 2016.

The Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) will last until June 17.

To forestall the leakage of the exam papers, the Ghana Education Service (GES) said it was employing the services of the (BNI) to ensure there was no leakage as occurred last year when five papers got to some candidates before they were due to have been written.

Director General of the GES Mr Jacob Kor told journalists at a press conference ahead of the papers that: “Right from the time the question papers are carried from the depot, there is going to be BNI personnel accompanying the questions.”

But Mrs Teye-Cudjoe said: “If they [BNI] want to come to the examination centres to find out that everything was going on well, that is fine and they are at liberty to do that, but we do not have any arrangement with them,” she emphasised.

Other measures instituted by authorities to address leakages include flying the papers to the examination centres and also banning supervisors and invigilators from going into the centres with mobile phones, respectively.