News coming in from The National Council of Private School Teachers shows that Public Basic Schools Are Busy Registering Private School Final Year Students For 2023 BECE which is contrary to the GES and WAEC directives.
The National Council of Private School Teachers, led by its Executive Director, Mr. Ackon James, visited some public schools that have been identified by private JHS heads as schools that have poached their final year students for the upcoming BECE in August.
The Ghana Education Service has indicated that it would deal with any school or head teacher found guilty of the offense. The efforts of the Private Schools Teachers Association Council led by the Executive Director of the association went to some public schools where students who had left prior to the completion of the BECE registration were found in JHS3 of the visited public schools.
Audio recordings of the interactions that ensued on the public premises of public schools and available to GhanaEducation.org proved that the students were in these schools. Some of the said learners were seen in the classrooms in the public schools visited and probably illegally registered for the BECE by the public schools visited.
The National Council of Private School Teachers leadership has directed that the students be released to go back to their mother schools to be registered for the 2023 BECE.
The Council has also taken steps to inform the GES and WAEC of the needed punitive measures to be taken against the public schools and their head teachers caught in the act.
The council will not hesitate to put out the names of the public schools and audio recordings of the conversations that confirmed the illegal practice should the said public schools and their head fail to comply with the directive
Registration of Private School Students for BECE by Heads of Public Schools is illegal yet, head teachers in public basic schools have continued to disregard the GES directive on the illegal act. Headteachers of public basic schools registering private school candidates may have been emboldened by the fact that the GES directive and the associated sanctions have become a yearly ritual by “a dog that barks but can’t bite”.
The registration of private school students by public schools goes a long way to negatively affect private schools that have toiled many years to prepare their candidates for the examination. When such students are registered by public schools and they excel, the public schools take the praise for no work done.
This illegal act must be criminalized and offending schools and leaders dealt with to put a stop to it instead of the lip service of the GES and WAEC in the matter.
READ: 8 Tips for passing 2023 BECE and WASSCE released by WAEC to all candidates
The practice of Public JHS poaching and registering Private JHS final-year students has increased in the last few years due to strange failure rates suffered by private schools at the end of each BECE examination. Again, the government’s policy of school placement which places students in public schools ahead of their colleagues from private schools can be cited as being a contributing factor.