Thursday, June 18, 2015

Intense competition cause of BECE leakage – Prof Dominic Fobih

Former Education Minister Prof Dominic Fobih has attributed the leakage of the Basic education Certificate Examination papers to intense competition between schools to outperform each other.

According to him, because most schools don’t want to score zeros or low marks during the BECE examination, they do anything to ensure that their students pass.

This encourages the leakage of the papers.

Prof Fobih’s comment follows the leakage and subsequent cancellation of five subjects in the ongoing BECE supervised and conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC).

A statement confirming the cancelation was released by the examination administration body Wednesday.

Signed by Mrs. Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, Deputy Director of Public Affairs, the statement listed the following papers are having been "compromised".

Prof. Dominic Fobih was Minister of Education in the erstwhile Kufuor administration.

Speaking on Adom FM’s morning show ‘Dwaso Nsem” Thursday, Fobih believes there is no way students should be blamed for the leakage adding that it was simply a leadership problem.

But he did not spare the teachers and education authorities of blame.

Prof Fobih fears that this form of corruption, if not dealt with immediately will affect the integrity and moral judgment of the students in the long term.

He called on government and the stakeholders in the education sector to, as a matter of urgency, modify the
objectives of the BECE.

The former Member of Parliament for Assin South Constituency said pupils do not have to qualify to go to SHS.

He said it is important to make SHS the mandatory terminal point, instead of using the BECE to terminate some pupils’ education.

Former Education Minister Dominic Fobih is calling for the complete restructuring of the BECE because “it lacks depth”.

According to the Professor, BECE should be an exam that seeks to identify the strengths of pupils and place them in their various preferred programmes like business, science, visual and arts at the Senior High
School (SHS) level.

In his view,” it is necessary to change the focus of the BECE” from its current selective system to a placement system which will be more beneficial to the student.

There is no need to sift through the candidates and take the supposed brilliant ones to SHS, every student’s strength in a particular subject or programme should be the standpoint for SHS education.

Source: Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Naa Sakwaba
Akwa

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