Deputy
Minister for Education, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has disputed media
reports that 182,000 students who sat for the 2013 Basic Education
Certificate Examination (BECE) could not obtain pass marks to enter the
second-cycled institutions in the country.
According to him, the
media has exaggerated the figures because the disclosed figures do not
reflect the actual numbers who failed in the examination and revealed
that it’s rather over 70,000 students who are expected to rewrite the
BECE this year.
The Tuesday edition of the Ghanaian Times
indicated that a total of 182,000 candidates who sat for the BECE did
not pass the core subjects and therefore failed to gain admission in the
public Senior High Schools in the country.
"The core subjects
are English Language, Mathematics, Social Studies and Integrated
Science, and the candidates either failed at least one of them, by
obtaining grade 7 and above, instead of the required passing grade of
between one and six," the publication read.
The Acting Director
of the Computerized School and Placement System (CSSPS), George
Atta-Boateng also told the newspaper that the "system was designed to
automatically reject any student who failed at least one core subject."
Though
the numbers seem alarming, Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa assured parents that
there is hope for their wards to get placement in the various public
Senior High Schools because the Education Ministry is "looking at
filling in the 80000 vacancies that we have left even after this first
phase. We are also looking at relaxing the pass mark policy a bit so
that we can then fill in these vacancies.But it is also significant to
stress that there is an opportunity to re-enter the BECE exams…”
He
advised the candidates who failed in the BECE to resit their
examinations so as to ensure that they get placement into the Senior
High Schools.
Speaking in an interview with Radio Gold, he urged
the students not to relinquish in their efforts to get the pass marks
to enter the Secondary institutions.
"Those who are not placed or
had very horrible grades; they shouldn’t give up…Those who do not make
it should repeat or should go to JHS3 again and be able to build their
continuous assessment and write the exams again”. |
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