Introduce School Placement Raw Score Cut Off Point And Save Our Education

The 2024 BECE results are out, with the school placements expected to be released soon. But the kind of grades students are making, some of which have been trending on the internet, leaves much to be desired. In 2023, students with aggregates from 30 to 48 complaining and requesting placement into grade A schools are sad and laughable at the same time. We can find solutions to such “annoying poor grades” if we want to avoid students obtaining such grades after 9 years of basic education.

The Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) administered by WAEC needs a new cut-off point to be introduced by the Ministry of Education.

The decision that nearly every grade and raw score obtained by students should earn them a place in our secondary schools does not make logic sense.

While the Free SHS policy aims at increasing access to secondary education, and that is worth commending, the financial commitments of the nation towards paying fees, feeding, and the supply of other logistics must be incurred on students with good grades and raw scores. Better still, the level of support you get should match the grades you make as you progress with your study.

We need to use free SHS investment on students who have exhibited academic seriousness at the basic school level and have the potential to excel. The wholesale application of the policy means that the government is investing hard-earned financial resources in junior high school graduates who make bad grades as well.

Such a move is a bad investment decision, no matter the defence put up for it.

The raw inputs (students) into SHS whose fees are paid by the state must be merit-based, even if we are applying the Free SHS policy.

If we want to improve the quality of passes at the BECE and WASSCE, we need to introduce a raw score cutoff point for entry into public senior high schools.

This will let the BECE candidates become serious.

It will make parents sit up.

It will make schools and teachers sit up.

This will improve healthy competition among schools and students across the country and make lazy students sit up.

Since not every WASSCE graduate gains admission into a tertiary institution, and all universities have cutoff points or grades, not every BECE graduate should be thrown into the SHS with a simple hope that they will improve and make good grades when they get to the end of their secondary education.

Introducing a cut-off point at the BECE would mean cutting down the failure rate of students who sit for the WASSCE and TVET examinations. It will mean cutting down on unnecessary spending on secondary education and moving such resources to other sectors of education that have been neglected, such as the basic school.

The government should also introduce a cutoff point for students who gain admission into TVET and further give such students more benefits than those who opt for the standard secondary education courses. This will further shift the interest of students and parents to prefer TVET education to secondary education.

The government must also make a conscious effort to improve at least 10 schools from category B and C to category A school status each and further expand facilities in existing category A schools that have land or space for expansion. This will further increase accessibility to secondary and TVET education.

Parents need to take serious interest in the basic education of their wards and must keep an eye on the academic progression and development of their Junior High School students. The need for the reintroduction of cut off point has come. Government needs to introduce the School Placement Raw Score Cut Off Point to save our education at the foundation level.

READ: BECE graduates with aggregate 30 to 48 do not deserve placement: They should be made to re-sit the BECE

In doing this, public basic schools need to be resources and teachers motivated to play their roles effectively.

Experiences of 2023 and the huge numbers obtained as grades have been repicated in the 2024 BECE as though it was a good thing. We cannot continue to hear all the huge and heart wrecking grades between 30 and 48 on TV, with parents defending bad grades and seeking placement into category A schools.

This joke must stop, and we need to tell each other the truth in the face. Any grade between 30 and 48 is failure.

The government and the MoE must stop polishing the bitter truth and ask parents whose wards make poor grades to help their wards to resit the BECE as private candidates.

No serious country must finance the education of academically poor students with the intention of increasing access. Let us invest our scarce resources as a nation in those who have the potential to give us better returns. Let the School Placement Cut-Off Point come now.