Introduce entrance exam for all universities if WASSCE isn’t credible

Introduce entrance exam for all universities if WASSCE isn’t credible for CoE Admissions

The credibility of the WASSCE results is been questioned indirectly by the National Teaching Council (NTC) with the new entrance exam to be introduced for applicants seeking entry into Colleges of Education. If WASSCE graduates do not have the basic competencies in Mathematics and English, how different are their colleagues who make it the Universities, and how reliable are their 8 and 9 As?

Dr. Christian Addai Poku, Registrar of the Teaching Council has made a sad revelation that students who enter the various Colleges of Education are not good enough (garbage) and that often, some of these students Aldo not get refined into the kind of teachers needed. He believes focus must shift to look at the selection process.

The decision to introduce the entrance exam for applicants interested in gaining admission into the various Colleges of Education has been welcomed by Principals of Colleges of Education.

To suggest the introduction of the entrance exam for all applicants for Colleges of Education is an attestation that the WASSCE results of candidates are not credible, unreliable or that, although students pass the WASSCE, their Mathematics and English language literacy are very poor and makes them unfit for teacher Education in Colleges.

Dr. Christian Addai Poku, Registrar of the Teaching Council has been making a case for the new entrance exam to be introduced. He had this to say…

“I said garbage-in garbage-out, but it is expected that even when garbage enters any of the 46 government Colleges of Education, tutors are expected to turn around the garbage”

“The unfortunate thing is that sometimes the garbage cannot be turned around and so there is the need for us to focus attention on the selection process, that is the entry point,” the NTC Registrar told journalists last year at the event.

“We need a system that does not rely solely on WASSCE for School results but something in addition to the results to see if the person entering the College is fully qualified,” he added while defending the new exam.

If the excitement of Colleges of Education with regards to the entrance exam is anything to go by, it will be prudent to introduce a tertiary entrance exam for all institutions if WASSCE isn’t credible.

This has seen some level of resistance or objection from the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT)

The education minister Dr. Adutwum in 2021 called for Universities to consider students who obtain D7 for admission. This call for foiled by the top universities including the University of Ghana.

One wonders why the government’s Education leader will make such suggestions and the NTC would now introduce entrance exam for students whose worse grades for admission into CoEs is C6.

Are the grades of students admitted not good enough for direct Admission?

Are we not by introducing COE entrance exam accepting that our WASSCE results are not credible hence the entrance examination layer to help screen.

Can we say, our WASSCE Graduates are poorly-cooked for tertiary academic work, or is the entrance exam another bureaucratic layer being introduced to cut down the number of Admissions and teachers produced to reduce teacher recruiting costs and existing backlog of teachers waiting for posting?

Is it going to be free or it is another opportunity to make applicants pay and to make easy money out of them? It is not clear if the entrance exam will be held before admission forms are sold to successful candidates or interested candidates will buy admission forms followed by the entrance exam.

The removal of the mandatory cut-off point for admission into secondary schools can also explain the introduction of the entrance exam for colleges.

Once the Free SHS’s aggregate 25 cutoff point has been removed, many students with weak mathematics and English literacy backgrounds find their way into various secondary schools. We invest our hard-earned resources in these students believing that access to secondary education has been expanded.

A large number of students per school per class coupled with long breaks means students with weak foundations are likely going to fail their WASSCE.

If the mass admission into Senior High Schools without a cutoff point is part of the current poor performance and weak mathematics and English language background, then it is time to reintroduce the cutoff point to get students at the JHS become more serious. We need to feed quality into our secondary schools in the first place to avoid the thoughts of entrance Examinations.

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From all indications, the NTC wants to introduce the entrance exams for CoE Admissions. It would be prudent to apply the same to all students entering any tertiary institution if we have lost trust in the grades WASSCE graduates make each year.

Source: Wisdom Hammond