'Give students more time to perpare for exams' - Prof Ghartey Ampiah

Accra, Aug 31, GNA - Professor Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, Provost of College of Education Studies, University of Cape Coast, says students should be given more time to prepare properly for their final exams so they can pass well.

'What we have noticed is that presently, students are not given more time to prepare for their exams. Another issue is that there is a wide gap between the syllabus used to teach at the Senior High School (SHS) and the Junior High School (JHS), making JHS students learn different things altogether at SHS', Prof Ghartey Ampiah said.

Prof Ampiah, who was addressing participants at the closing ceremony of the 33rd annual conference of the Association for Educational Assessment in Africa (AEAA) held in Accra, said the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) should therefore not be condemned by the society but should be encouraged to help find solutions to the issue of low performance in examinations.

He said both JHS and SHS teachers who teach English, Maths and Integrated Science should also be regularly taken through capacity building so that they could teach properly in the era of rapid change.

The five-day conference was hosted by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC), Ghana office, on the theme: 'Quality Assurance in Educational Assessment in an era of Rapid Change' to discuss and exchange experiences in examination assessment.

Examiners and experts from all WAEC countries in West Africa, namely, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gambia participated in the conference with more than 300 experts in education and examinations, and partners from UK, US, France, Japan, and Switzerland in attendance.

Explaining further, Prof Ghartey Ampiah said assessment of trend of passes in the WAEC results for four core subjects namely English language, Integrated Science, Mathematics and Social studies in Ghana over the past eight years showed that the four-year students who took the examinations in 2011 had increases in percentage passes over the previous year of three-year students.

'The percentage passes decreased the following year when the four-year and three-year took the examinations together and this downward trend has continued to this year where percentage passes have fallen for all four subjects,' he noted.

He said clearly, the four year students performed well because among others, they had enough time to study.

'The lesson to be learnt is that students need more time with some of the subjects than others and therefore one factor accounting for the poor performance of students is time spent in school,' he added.

He, therefore, urged WEAC to do more than conduct and publish examination results while Africa states create a demand for improved assessment practices by helping parents to understand the need for a change in the conduct and assessment of examinations.

The Very Reverend Sam Nii Nmai Ollenu, Head of Ghana office of WEAC, who was elected as the new President of the AEAA, said efforts would be made to make inroads into the Francophone countries and other language blocks in Africa to get them join the Association.

'We have told ourselves that in this Association, we do not compete, but rather we compete and collaborate. So together we can achieve the goals we have set for ourselves in the coming year,' he said

At the end of the conference, members adopted a communiqué which acknowledged the values of accurate examination data as it constituted a vital information for the refinement of education for human resources development in the countries and said AEAA would strive to achieve that.

It also recognised the need to develop strategies to combat the ever-increasing menace of examination malpractices in the countries, not losing sight of the possibility of using computer-based tests.

The Communiqué also affirmed that the 33rd conference was a resounding success.

Zimbabwe would host the 34th conference of AEAA in 2016. GNA