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Indeed, the lack of facilities in most junior high schools, especially the public ones, have been a major concern for many who have stressed the need for education authorities to provide all students, no matter where they live in the country, with facilities for their academic work. This requires that all schools have the needed basic facilities that would make formal education useful to them. For instance, while schools in the cities have the luxury of extra tuition, some schools in a number of rural communities do not even have classrooms or tables and chairs to sit on. Additionally, they lack the full complement of teachers, classrooms and textbooks for studying. The poor preparation by candidates from the public junior high schools leads to the poor performance of a large number of candidates. Obviously, there are brilliant students in such public schools who despite their situation still pass very well and gain admission to SHSs. The rest end up doing menial jobs while others move to the cities to engage in street hawking, among other things. A JHS graduate, Master Joshua Tetteh of the Amanfrom D/A Experimental School, believes that all BECE candidates across the country need to have equal and adequate facilities while preparing for the BECE because they have to write the same examination. Another candidate, Master Musah Ibrahim of the Odukpong Kpehe JHS, said schools in the urban communities had better facilities and teachers for different subjects to prepare them for the examination �while those of us in the rural areas do not�. �Meanwhile, when it comes to the marking of scripts, examiners do not favour the candidates from the rural schools,� he said. For his part, an educationist and former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Michael Nsowah, said the examination was fair since all schools had access to the syllabus. Rather, he said, it was the duty of the state to provide teachers and other educational materials and facilities to rural schools. Indeed, a significant aspect of the BECE is when the results are released by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). Around that period, one can find anxious parents and students trooping to nearby post offices and WAEC offices in their respective regions to buy the scratch cards used for checking the results online. CSSPS Placement These notwithstanding, candidates who obtain good scores get their first choice schools during the first placement while others whose raw scores are not strong enough are posted to their second, third or fourth choice schools. However, because of the large number of candidates and the limited vacancies in SHSs, especially the high profile schools, candidates with uncompetitive results have to stay at home longer and wait for second or third placements by the CSSPS before securing admissions to schools. By the time such students get to school, the first term is virtually over. The Director of Basic Education at the GES, Mr Stephen Adu, has stated that the delay in the second placements and sometimes the mopping up exercise comes about because the CSSPS Secretariat has to wait for feedback from the schools after the first placements to check whether or not all the students placed had accepted their placement before going ahead with another batch of students. To qualify for selection, he said, the least grade of a candidate should be grade five in six subjects including English, Maths, Science and Social Studies, adding that at the end of the day the candidate should have a total of aggregate 30. However, last year, as well as the previous one, the GES bent the rule for candidates by placing them in schools that had low enrolment. This practice was criticised by the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) which accused the GES of wholesale promotion, thereby making it difficult for them to get enough students to enrol in private schools. Resit of BECE Although there has been an opportunity for candidates to resit the examination, all these years, the modalities have not been attractive to students. The candidate is required to go back to his/her former school and rewrite the entire examination. This is certainly difficult for most students who would have loved to rewrite the exam because they would have to sit in the same classroom with their juniors, something most young people would strongly resist. Already, most classrooms are congested so additional students writing the BECE would create more problems with regard to supervision of work. Such students would also not be really welcome in their schools because most schools keenly watch their performance at the BECE and would think those students would draw them back from achieving excellent results. Due to the unattractive nature of the resit, the Ministry of Education and the WAEC decided to restructure the process of the examination. The modalities on the new resit requirements have already been developed while the new resit policy would be launched this month. According to the modalities or guidelines, the examination is open to students to resit and first-timers, that is persons who want to write the examination for the first time. For those who would resit, the candidate must provide the index number and year of examination for his/her previous sitting of the BECE. However, in the case of a or person writing the exam for the first time, the person must be 18 years or above, and under this category, �students in junior high schools (JHSs) are not qualified to register for the examination�.