Students boycott BECE

DAILY GUIDE has gathered that about 22 candidates have boycotted the ongoing resit of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in some districts in the Eastern Region.

The resit exams started yesterday across the country, with National Security operatives serving as invigilators at the various centres.

Reports from eight districts in the Eastern Region indicated that most of the candidates who hailed from remote villages and had to travel far to the exam centres boycotted the exams.

The reports indicated that in Akropong two candidates failed to show up for the resit, whilst in Akyemansa three were absent. The rest are Ayensuano, four; Atiwa, two; Asuogyaman, three; Upper West Akim, one; Suhum, one and Afram Plains North and South, two and four respectively.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that when news broke that some papers had been cancelled, some of the candidates, who claimed they did not get access to the alleged leaked examination questions, said they would not resit the papers since they were innocent and didn’t deserve to be punished.

The affected papers were English paper two, Mathematics paper two, Integrated Science, Religious and Moral Education (RME) paper two and Social Studies.

On Monday DAILY GUIDE visited one of the schools in the Ayensuano District and, on interacting with some of the candidates after their English paper two, gathered that most of the candidates were not prepared to rewrite the papers that were cancelled.

Most of the candidates who spoke to the paper complained bitterly that the questions were more difficult than the previous ones.

At other centres, some of the candidates said they were intimidated by the presence of operatives of National Security and the BNI.

Minister Visits

However, Deputy Minister of Education, Alex Kyeremeh, on Monday when touring some of the exam centres in the region, said using operatives of the security agencies to supervise the exams was not meant to scare the students and the teachers.

He said government wanted to prevent a recurrence of the leakage which went viral some weeks ago.

The Deputy Education Minister further said government would make public findings on what led to the leakage of the papers.

The security officials, as gathered, will be in charge of selecting examination questions, printing papers and distributing them throughout the two-day period.