The Second Lady of the Republic of Ghana, Samira Bawumia, has charged parents in the country with supporting and supervising their children’s academic performance.

According to her, parents must be interested in ensuring that their children perform well, particularly at the basic level, for them to take advantage of the free Senior High School policy.

The Second Lady, who also serves as the Director of the Samira Empowerment and Humanitarian Project, believes that parents should be passionate about supervising and investing in their children’s education because they are their future leaders.

She was speaking at a junior high-level training programme for teachers, circuit supervisors, and headteachers on core subjects to help them prepare final-year students at the basic level for their exams.

The initiative, she explained, was a collaboration with the Ghana Education Service and other stakeholders to address failures in some communities across the country.

She revealed that her foundation had evaluated the WAEC Chief Examiners Report and identified the issue, hence the training programme to assist in addressing the challenge.

She also stated that it was discovered that several of the students who failed their exams lacked adequate preparation for the exams.

"We have discovered that some areas do not perform well in the BECE. With the implementation of free SHS, it will be critical to prepare final-year students to pass and benefit from the free education policy. We conducted research and discovered that a lack of preparation is the reason some students fail their exams.

Given this, after evaluating the Chief Examiners Report, we collaborated with GES, WAEC, and other stakeholders to bring together teachers, instructors, circuit supervisors, and headteachers to train them on the core subjects so they could go back and prepare the final-year students to pass their exams. This is to assist them in utilising the free SHS policy.”

She told the parents that for a child to perform well, it takes the teacher, but with parental support.

She thanked the teachers for their unwavering support and encouraged them not to give up.

She emphasised the importance of parents allowing their children to learn and prepare for exams, as well as supervising them as they do their homework and other school-related activities.

Emmanuel Essuman, the Central Regional Director for Education, praised the Second Lady for the initiative.

She promised that the Directorate would put all of its efforts and resources into ensuring that the students who took the exams this year performed better than in previous years.