Break WAEC’s monopoly - CCT urges gov't

The Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT) has emphasized the need for a second examination body to be established by the state which will be credible enough to examine students in the country.

According to the group, the current sole examination body the West African Examination Council’s, (WAEC)’s monopoly of conducting exams, has resulted in a situation where some of its actions adversely affect education in Ghana.

WAEC is currently withholding the results of over 8,000 students who sat for the 2015 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for various examination malpractices.

The Council has released examination details of BECE candidates to the Computerized Selection and Placement Centre (CSPC) to start allocating Senior High Schools for those who passed their exams.

The month of September which marks the beginning of a new academic year in Ghana’s educational calendar has been exhausted but the exercise of placement of schools is yet to be concluded.

What is more worrying is the fact that it remains unclear when the seized results will be released for onward placement of schools for the concerned students.

Speaking on TV3’s Consumer Watch Programme, President of CCT, Eric Opoku said WAEC’s action is very worrying and also a setback to ensuring that students are given solid foundation during their first year in Second Cycle institutions.

“It is about time that government, The Ghana Education Service and the National Accreditation Board looks at the possibility of establishing another examination body aside WAEC, so that WAEC’s monopoly is broken because it is unduly delaying the process.

We need to know that we have a curriculum which has a life span. If I have three years to teach the students and I lose the first term which has been the case in our recent past, it makes it’s even difficult to cover some of the topics.

Meanwhile we all know and understand that the three years is not really three years, because we have vacation, extra curriculum activities like sports and of course you cannot rule out strikes, and so it puts a lot of pressure on our syllabus which makes it very difficult for teachers to finish the syllabus before the students write their final examination. Certainly another examination body is needed”.