WASSCE in Ghana – Education Minister, Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh has disclosed that the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) will be moved from February to May/June.
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This move he said, will enable the students and teachers complete the nine-term secondary school syllabus before the final exam begins. The change follows an agreement between the Ministry of Education and the West African Examination Council (WAEC).
The minister who spoke on at the Meet The Press series in Accra on Thursday, November 30, explained how challenging it is for students to assimilate the school curricula with the squeezed timing.
Students he said, always lost the first term over the years with the February schedule.
The SHS syllabus is for nine terms, three terms in a year, so we envisage that by the time the child has finished the nine terms, he or she would be ready to take the West African Senior School Certification Examination
Explaining further, he said that WASSCE in Ghana starts in February, which is the second term and finishes just the first week in the third term.
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This simply means that the students lose the entire second term and never had any teaching and learning for the third. The students thereby lose three terms out of nine terms – a possible reason for poor examination results.
This formed the basis on which the ministry of education went into deliberation regarding the current system which has been termed unfavorable. The change he said, is expected to improve results for final year students since they would have adequate time to prepare.
Successive governments have all dwelt on the duration of Senior High School in Ghana. It can be recalled that under former president Kufuor in 2007, the three year SHS duration system was changed by his administration.
The NDC administration which succeeded Kufouor’s rule had changed it back to three years claiming the four-year duration brought undue hardships to parents.
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