Do you agree that it is time to ALLOW BECE CANDIDATES TO USE CALCULATORS AND TABLES? Read this thought-provoking and timely article on this all-important debate.
The Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) will soon start in October. The primary or foundational examination determines the path of one’s academic journey in our country.
Teachers, parents, and the candidates themselves are preparing earnestly to ensure a sterling outcome. But are all conditions fair for the BECE candidate to write and pass his or her examination?
Allow BECE candidates to use calculators and tables
How is a thirteen (13) to fifteen (15) year old writing Mathematics and Science without calculators fair; while their elder brothers and sisters in the Senior High Schools, as well as their parents and grandparents in the tertiary institutions, are graciously allowed to use calculators to write examinations and sometimes calculate same quantities as the BECE candidates?
As a young candidate in the early years of 2000, I didn’t seem to notice anything bad about this unfair treatment meted out to BECE candidates. Fast forward, going to SHS, I realized this is really unfair to the BECE candidates.
I remembered using two calculators during my Core Mathematics and Elective Mathematics in the SHS. How do you expect a child of an average of fifteen (15) years to find a simple interest on a principal of GHS 56,044,000 at a rate of 21% per annum for 7 years, without using a calculator, yet another of eighteen (18) to twenty-three (23) is allowed to use a calculator plus tables in answering the same question?
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The essence of this article is not to just lament about the problem of not allowing BECE candidates to use calculators but to actually appeal and speak to the conscience of all stakeholders in education to speak for and allow BECE candidates to use calculators.
Calculators in themselves do not give answers if one does not know procedures. Surprisingly, there has been a topic in the old curriculum “INTRODUCTION TO CALCULATORS” and the current curriculum emphasizes the use of models and calculators in teaching concepts; especially in Mathematics.
What is the use of learning a skill you cannot apply?
As a teacher of Mathematics for seven years, I find it very difficult to understand why we must subject our young adults to such inhumane, unfair and outdated practice of torture by denying BECE candidates to use of calculators during examinations. Your ability to memorize times tables does not determine your intelligence or academic prowess if you don’t understand why the area of a triangle is × base × height.
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The time to act is now!
It is not too late. The change can start now. We can correct this.
We cannot continue everything we inherited from our colonial masters, though they have abandoned it.
It’s time our young BECE candidates are allowed to use tables and calculators.
If this simple request cannot be granted to these young ones, then there is no meaning to the “Justice” on our coat of arms as far as examination conditions in our education system is concerned.
By: Prince Dzokpo
Teacher: Mathematics
Borae No.2 Foundation JHS
Krachi Nchumuru
Oti Region