<<Print>>

A total of 105,608 candidates made up of 54,487 males and 51,121 females are writing this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the Ashanti region.

The figure is a 12 per cent increase of the 93,570 candidates who wrote the examination last year.

Ms Monica Ankrah, a senior official of the Ashanti regional office of the Ghana Education Service (GES), told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Kumasi during a tour of some of the examination centres, that the development was encouraging.
She said the country needed literate citizenry to prosecute its development agenda.

Ms Ankrah said students from 2,800 basic schools in the region were writing the examination in 369 centres.
The BECE commenced successfully in all the centres visited during the tour as the candidates wrote their first two papers-English Language and Religious and Moral Education smoothly.

Ms Ankrah advised the candidates to be law-abiding, saying it was in their own interest to obey instructions from their invigilators and supervisors for the successful conduct of the exams.

Meanwhile, Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), who also toured some of the centres encouraged the candidates to be focused as they “overcome the first major educational hurdle in their careers”.

He said education was key to the growth and development of any society, and that was why the government was making massive investments in the sector.

The MCE cited the implementation of the free Senior High School (SHS), payment for the registration fees for candidates in public schools writing the BECE, amongst others.

A total of 24, 513 candidates are sitting for the exams in the Kumasi metropolis, comprising 11, 690 males and 12, 823 females.