Ghana needs to find more effective ways of assessing students than the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) system, a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Ghana, Dr Joseph Osarfo, has proposed.
461, 013 candidates from 14,267 public and private Junior High Schools are writing their final examinations beginning Monday June 13, 2016.
Leakage of the exam papers in the past has been a problem for authorities and the Ghana Education Service (GES) said it was employing the services of the Bureau of National (BNI) to ensure there was no such occurrence this year. Five papers got to some candidates before they were due to have been written in the 2015 BECE.
Director General of the GES Jacob Kor told journalists at a press conference ahead of the papers that: “Right from the time the question papers are carried from the depot, there [are] going to be BNI personnel accompanying the questions.”
Other measures instituted by authorities to address leakages include flying the papers to the examination centres and also banning supervisors and invigilators from going into the centres with mobile phones, respectively.
According to the clinical psychologist, the presence of security men at the centres can put pupils through psychological trauma, which may affect their performance in the examination.
He argued that examinations were not the only way to evaluate the performance of students and has asked stakeholders to rethink and adopt a more modern and effective alternative that would be better for everyone.
He said too much emphasis on the BECE made students distressed, for which they would do anything to pass, a situation that contributes to the examination leakages authorities are battling to address.
“If we keep doing that then we create a certain sense of desperation of wanting to pass the exam by all means in order to move to the next level. I have done some studies on suicides among adolescents in Ghana and one of the major triggers of these kids who are often in JHS is examination. When they do not pass, they feel life must come to an end,” he emphasised.
He continued: “I am told that it is only in Ghana that we still write this JHS exam. The leakage is becoming a problem and some of them could become suicidal when the papers are cancelled and all that.”
He maintained that the exam was a great disservice to some young individuals who may be otherwise brilliant but could fail the BECE and end up on the streets without any assistance.
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