Ghanaian politician and member of the National Democratic Congress, Dominic Napare is accusing the ruling government of trying to rig the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) scheduled for April 2020.
According to him, the ruling government providing past questions for the first batch of students under the free Senior High School (SHS) policy preparing to write the WASSCE is highly suspicious. “Why should the government purchase past questions from the examination body (West African Examination Council) which is going to test these kids. Never in the history of Ghana has the government bought past questions for students.” Parents and teachers help the kids to get these past questions so what has changed now he queried.
In a phone interview on Happy FM’s ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ with Okatakyie Afrifa Mensah the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Sene East Constituency backed his assertion by saying that, the double track system has reduced not only the contact hours between students and teachers but the quality of secondary education as well. And this has got the government panicking. “The government fears the kids will fail the WASSCE and that is why they are acting ahead of time to get them passing.”
Read: Solve the problem of lack of textbooks, not past questions – Minority to Gov’t
He further reasoned that the government wants to prove to Ghanaians that the free SHS policy and the double track works by feeding the kids with answers to the WASSCE in April which is immoral. “As a country, we do not need our future to be only capable of passing exams but we need them to be versatile, good for the industry and morally upright”, he added.
He asserted that the government giving the kids access to their exam questions before hand will give the kids ample time to prepare and make the government of the day popular amongst Ghanaians.
The Ghana Education Service has procured 400,000 sets of questions and answer booklets from the West African Examination Council (WAEC), for distribution to the first batch of beneficiaries of the Free Senior High School Policy.
According to them, this will guide the students in their preparations and help them excel in their upcoming exams in April, 2020. But they have come under some rather huge criticism for doing this.
By: Joel Sanco