The Deputy Minister for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, has announced that there are enough spaces to admit all 600,714 candidates writing this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) into the over 900 Senior High Schools (SHS)/Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions.
According to him, what was needed was for the candidates to pass the BECE so they could also benefit from the novelty Free SHS programme.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour announced this when he interacted with some BECE candidates who were writing their examination papers at the St. Thomas Aquinas Senior High School in Accra.
The Deputy Minister, who was accompanied by the Greater Accra Director of Education, Mr Stephen Bamfo assured the candidates of the government’s preparedness to put in place measures to ensure that they received the best of support towards their education.
“Free High School (FSH)/ Free Technical and Vocational Education and Training (FTVET) await you so work hard to benefit from the novel policy to shape your future dreams”, he said.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour reminded the candidates to focus on what they can do and desist from accepting any sort of help from anyone, since they had different sets of questions, although they were in the same examination hall.
Addressing the media after the monitoring exercise, the Deputy Minister dispelled rumors that Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) was going to be cancelled, saying “There has not been any discussion or policy to terminate BECE today or tomorrow, so the notion should be disregarded”.
Again, he explained that “the West African Examination Council (WAEC) remains our partner in education development. We will keep resourcing WAEC so it would continue to discharge its mandate as required of them”.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour recounted the supportive role WAEC has played over the years, towards the development of education in the country, indicating that “once in a while, we remit them depending on their needs and the programme they are running”.
The Deputy Minister lamented the few isolated infractions at certain examination centres across the country which he described as very unfortunate.
He stated that those involved would be dealt with drastically to serve as a lesson to others as well as deter them from thinking about examination malpractices.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour was upbeat that the arrest of the few teachers was evident to the stringent measures put in place to curb all forms of exams malpractices.
By Felix Baidoo
