Nabdam: BECE Candidates Abandon Classes For Funerals

Scores of candidates expected to take part in this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the Nabdam District of the Upper East region have been reported to be lavishing resources including the time meant for classes on funerals.

Worried authorities say the candidates, as well as their juniors, have been regular faces on funeral grounds because they are “hopelessly” obsessed with the foreign music often played at such platforms.

Starr News learns the funeral-loving students do virtually nothing but doze throughout the next day in the classroom after returning at dawn from funeral grounds. The ‘silent epidemic’, among other factors, has taken a prominent toll on the district’s performances at the BECE in recent years. The performance has continued to drop terrifyingly since 2013 amid fears 2016 may bring the worst result yet.

From a score of 54.5% at the BECE in 2013, the district dropped to 46.4% in 2014 and slipped further to 40.6% in 2015 despite some interventions put in place with assistance from non-governmental organisations.

Experts fear standards in the district, whose famous trademark until recent times was passion for books, may be heading for a crash as countless students have submerged themselves “too deep” in all-night musical entertainments, known in local parlance as “spinning”, at funerals.

“During funerals, they would stay throughout the night. They dance and even they impregnate themselves. Funerals sometimes last one full week. If a candidate spends the whole week in funeral house dancing, what performance is he going to come out with? Somebody staying the whole night in a funeral, what effective work can he do in the daytime? When they come, when teachers are teaching, they are sleeping,” the Director of Education for the area, Edward Azure, told Starr News.

Standards at war with mining, child marriages

Whilst the tiring and risky search for gold has condemned the future of some children to mining tunnels, girls below fifteen years are leaving the classrooms in a hurry to tie the knot.

“The children sometimes don’t take education seriously especially in this district. When they are registered, a lot of them don’t attend classes again even though we try to organise free extra classes for them, they don’t want to come. Some of them leave classes for galamsey (small-scale mining) in areas like Wogbare and Pelungu and the rest. And some of them say once they are registered nobody can stop them from writing exams; therefore, whether they go to school or not they are eligible to write,” the director observed.

At least five primary schoolgirls below 16 years were reported to have been married off in the area between the last September and April, this year. Some parents, according to the Girl Child Education Officer for the district, Elizabeth Atinga, strongly have continued to wage war against the GES, any individual or organisation who is poised to rescue and return the underage brides to school. One girl, in primary five, threatened to commit suicide when external pressure mounted on her to return to the classroom from her husband’s home in 2014.

There are a number of girls who are not married yet but who too soon have replaced the schoolbags on their backs with underfed babies whose adolescent fathers have denied responsibility. The district has been menaced by a worrying number of pregnant BECE candidates over the years with about 43 of such candidates in 2014. The situation, according to the GES, is improving with the interventions of “Girls Clubs and the Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana”.

“It looks like the traditional authorities don’t have the willpower to tell their people to stop those practices, like spinning in funerals. The teachers, too, some of them are not very committed. Here, about ninety percent of our teachers reside in Bolga and commute. So, in such situations, punctuality, and even regularity to school, suffers. So, contact of time would be lost. Most parents, excuse me to say, are a bit irresponsible. Some parents don’t even know the class in which their children are let alone to supervise their learning,” Mr. Azure added.

Students blame parents for awful path
The disturbing depth of waywardness, according to some BECE candidates in the area, is anchored in failure on the part of parents, and even teachers, to control the youth and to educate them how young adults ought to live.

Constancia Anamoh, a student at the Daborin Junior High School, said: “For us moving around partying, it’s friends who influence us to go there. Not that we get something new there, it’s just that we get there with friends, chat and laugh. Our parents should try as much as possible to advise us. Some of us fear our fathers than our mothers, but our fathers don’t have time for us. They just go out and come back at any time.”

“Our teachers always call PTA meetings,” Simon Kologbon Sebig, a BECE candidate, told Starr News. “When the parents come, they will say they don’t know how to control their children; the children are rather controlling them. That is why they roam about, attending funerals. We are at adolescent stage. If you don’t know what you are supposed to do, your parents must tell you what to do. Or else, at that stage, you will be eager to do certain things,” he added.

Another student, Nancy Yenpoka Mba, echoed earlier opinions, saying: “We always like to follow the boys because of the adolescent feelings in us. We hardly know that education is better than the funerals. And when we refuse, our parents leave us to do what we want. That is why things are happening this way.”

Funeral grounds have remained entry points for babies born to teenage mothers, most of whom hardly continue with their education once they welcome their first babies.

“Friends often come to us when we are reading to take us to funerals. If you like to play more than you should read and not think about the results of your action, you would end up at the funeral places and could become pregnant. That’s what is happening. And our parents, too, need to advise us but they do so in a harsh way,” Selina Namoog, a JHS 3 student, told Starr News.

NDC candidate intervenes with a donation
Six hundred and eighty-four (684) candidates from fifteen (15) schools in the area are expected to take part in the BECE scheduled to begin on Monday June 13, this year.

Concerned about the dreadful direction the district’s educational sector is heading, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate for Nabdam, Dr. Mark Kurt Nawaane, has donated 699 maths sets to the candidates ahead of the examinations.

Presenting the items at the Nabdam District Education Directorate, the candidate expressed the hope that the instruments would motivate the BECE candidates to turn the abysmal results around.

Each of the parcels is emblazoned with the words: ‘Donated by Dr. Mark Kurt Nawaane’. But critics have wondered what difference the intervention can make with barely two weeks to the nationwide examination.

“When you are writing, just know that the whole of Nabdam is behind you in these exams that you are writing. And I know that something is going to come out of these exams for you. In addition, I will add two hundred Ghana cedis so that you will use it for fuel. You need fuel to distribute the maths sets,” an optimistic Dr. Nawaane told a nucleus of BECE candidates who clapped as he wished them well at the presentation ceremony.

The District Chief Executive (DCE) for the area, Vivian Anarfo, encouraged the candidates to work harder and get closer to God so they could come out of the examinations with flying colours. She also commended the teachers and officials at the GES district directorate for exhibiting commitment despite the trying conditions under which they work. The directorate is operating from a hot, ramshackle structure without ceiling, beset with inadequate space, sometimes without lights and only different from a bakery because there are a few computers in it.