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28.10.2011 Education

Worst BECE results in 13yrs -DI calls for action

28.10.2011 LISTEN
By The Statesman

The Danquah Institute is calling on government to pay attention to the serious crisis in the quality of education at the basic level and take urgent, decisive and sustainable action to arrest this negative development.

 
The call comes against the backdrop of the figures from West African Examination Council which show that the pass rate of students who sat for the Basic Education Certificate of Examination has been on a constant downward decline since 2009.

 
According to DI, more than half of a million young people with an average age of fifteen years have been thrown onto the streets with no employable skills in the past three years.

 
“We are making this call because, otherwise, we fear that if this trend of high failure rate continues, the nation risks banishing about half of its young generation to lurching on the fringes of society, a phenomenon that could have dangerous national security ramifications forGhana in the near future,” a release from DI noted.

 
The 2011 results of BECE students have been the worst in thirteen years using 1998 as the base year, with 46.93 percent of students achieving a pass rate and thus being eligible for placement into senior high school.

 
Out of the 375,280 students who sat for the 2011 examination, only 176,128 passed their examinations with the fate of 199,152 students now doomed to a bleak future of uncertainties.

 
The average pass rate in the last three years under the National Democratic Congress has fallen by more than twelve percentage points to 48.75 percent.   The New Patriotic Party in its eight years achieved an average pass rate of 61.25 percent for students who sat for the BECE examination.

 
The sudden reversal of students' performance resulting in a peculiar constant decline in standards since 2009 calls for urgent and detailed programme to arrest the situation, says DI.

 
According to DI, the trend signifies a crisis in education at the basic level that requires urgent and deliberate attention from government.

 
The policy think tank also questions policy decisions taken by the current administration in the area of teaching and learning from agitations and strike actions by teachers.

 
It would be recalled that Danquah Institute had warned the decision of government to slash funding in key education areas which sent a disturbing signal indicative of a gradual return to the situation of negligible funding witnessed over ten years ago.

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