WASSCE failures: Assess quality of teachers – Jantuah

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has been called upon to interrogate the quality of persons who teach in both junior and senior high schools across the country, following the abysmal performance of candidates in this year’s West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

Results of the 2016 WASSCE were announced by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) on Tuesday August 9. According to WAEC, only 53.19 per cent of students who sat for the WASSCE passed in English, with only 32.83 per cent passing in Core Mathematics. Additionally, only 48.48 per cent of students secured passes in Integrated Science. It has emerged that less than half of the 247,262 students who sat for the examination obtained the minimum grades for admission into tertiary institutions.

On the back of abysmal performances, Mr Kwame Jantuah, a member of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), has called for an interrogation of teaching standards and lesson notes used in handing down tuition.

Speaking on TV3’s New Day Saturday August 13, he said: “If education is not actually helping our young ones, our children, our youth, to be able to move forward, then where are we going? I believe that we should first interrogate the type of lecturers and the type of notes that they use to teach our children because what you put in is what comes out.

“How come we hear of the whole secondary school, the whole group of students who took the examination, all of them have failed? Do you blame the young ones? No, I don’t think so.”