Poor BECE performance in Lambussie-Karni District

The Lambussie-Karni District in the Upper West Region has for the past three consecutive years performed poorly in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) despite some modest interventions by government and the Assembly.

The statistics indicate that in 491 candidates in 2011 sat for the examination in the district with only 111, representing 22.6 per cent having passed.

The success rate increased to 25.5 percent in 2012 when 109 of the 427 candidates who sat for the examination passed.

However, the pass rate dropped again to 22.2 percent in 2013, with only 117 candidates out of the 528 candidates making it.

Alhaji Amidu Sulemani, Upper West Regional Minister, in a speech read on his behalf by his Deputy, Dr. Musheibu Mohammed Alfa, at the Second Ordinary Meeting of the Lambussie-Karni District Assembly, described the trend as unacceptable and must be reversed.

The Regional Minister, therefore, tasked the District Assembly to fashion out strategies to improve the trend and provide a brighter future for children in the district.

“It is shameful to have beautiful school structures from which we churn out mass failures,” he stated.

Alhaji Sulemani noted that education was the path way for development and that all districts must place high premium on education to improve on its human resource.

Mr. Bom Kofi Dy-yaka, Lambussie-Karni, District Chief Executive (DCE), pointed out that one of the problems hindering quality education in the district was lack of effective planning and monitoring at all levels.

He said the District Education Oversight Committee (DEOC) had been reconstituted with its Sub-committees to tackle the problems confronting the sector head on.

The DCE said the Assembly continued to give priority to education in the allocation of resources; however, there were still significant funding constraints that impeded its effort to meet the requirement of every department under it.

It would, therefore, continue to support strategic areas within the sector, he said.

Mr. Dy-yaka announced that work had commenced on the construction of the Community Senior High School at Lambussie and appealed to the people to give the contractor the necessary support that would enable him to deliver on schedule as he promised.