JHS Students To Resit BECE--Recipe For Mediocrity?

According to a report published in the Daily Graphic a few days ago, “students who fail the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) will, from February 2015, be allowed to resit the examination as private candidates.”

This, the report continued, was settled upon after a discourse between the Government and the West African Examination Council (WAEC).

After reading the report, I reread it, not sure of what my eyes were seeing. Junior High School students to resit the BECE as private candidates? Seriously? Good heavens!

Are we, as a nation, really serious about the sort of educational system we have in this country and the sort of standards our children are exposed to? And what sort of policy makers do we have in the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service, and the Government of the day?

BECE candidates who fail their exams being allowed to resit their exams as private candidates is the worst and the most mediocre, backward thinking educational policy I've ever heard of. Really. The worst since the then Kufour Government decided to change the 3-years Senior High School program into a 4-years course in the absence of needed infrastructure.

Why do I think such a move is mediocre? Simply because it isn't, can't, and won't be the solution to J.H.S. students failing their exams. This is a move that from the getgo will result into an increased number of students failing at the regular exams! Same way it happened when private exams were introduced at the Senior High School level.

The mere availability of an exam students can write when they fail the normal one is a negative incentive that always cause the less serious students to become less and less serious in their studies; they know that if they fail the regular exams, there's another chance to pass (and who doesn't know that private exam questions are always easier to handle?), so why not? Why not fail and rewrite? Yeah.

Put into proper perspective, this is a move that, I suspect, was hatched and will be implemented simply because it makes financial sense (come on! we all know the loads of money that WAEC makes when S.H.S. graduates register to rewrite their WASSCE?); as long as it makes financial sense, to hell with other justifications.

Of course, some students who fail the normal exams will profit from this, but there's really no need for such an exam. The current situation whereby those who fail go back to school to maneuver their way through another year to get the chance to write again is good as it is. If the student is ashamed to go back and join people who were once his/her juniors then let him/her go to another school.

Instead of the Government and the Ghana Education Service launching a research into why students aren't doing well at the exams and then putting in place measures to address this causes, they're content to come out with a mediocre solution, which will in the long run bring about an increase in failures at the exams.

Clueless or money-centred—any of these modifiers aptly applies to our policy makers in the educational sector; they really aren't interested in improving education in this country.