Students Prevented From Writing WASSCE

Some final-year students of the Aburi Presbyterian Senior Technical School have accused authorities of the school of preventing them from writing the ongoing West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) because they owe fees. However, the school authorities have denied the allegation. According to the Assistant Headmistress of the school in charge of Academics, Mrs Cynthia Anim, the school had allowed every final-year student to write the examination, except that �we go round during the examination to collect fees from students owing the school". �Often parents give fees to their children but some of the children squander the money," she said. The students said they were sometimes allowed access to the examination halls but were sacked after the authorities had realised that some of them owed one or two terms� fees. According to some of the affected students who spoke to the Daily Graphic on the school compound at Aburi yesterday, they were sometimes allowed into the examination halls just 20 to 30 minutes to the end of the papers. "WASSCE is our future but the school authorities would not be fair and considerate enough to allow us to write the papers. After all our parents will pay the fees on a later date," they said. When the Daily Graphic visited the school yesterday, it found out that a number of the fee-owing students were idling, after they had been prevented from writing the Sculpture paper. Their mates who had paid their fees were seen writing the paper. The candidates, comprising both boarding and day students, claimed that they had paid the required registration fees for the examination. Some of them conceded, however, that they owed school fees, for which reason they had been prevented from writing the Core Mathematics, Oral English and Sculpture papers. They stressed that the action of the authorities was too harsh, adding, "Why should we be subjected to such harsh treatment because of the inability of our parents to pay our fees on time?" The students disclosed that in addition to school and extra classes fees, the authorities had also asked them to pay GH�20 each towards breakages.