What Basic Schools are hiding from parents of 2022 BECE candidates

Passing the BECE is very important to candidates and parents because it offers the learner an opportunity to gain admission to Senior High School, which brings satisfaction to parents. If the candidate’s results and school placement meet the high expectations of parents and the candidate, it even increases their joy, but very often many parents and students get the shock of their lives after the BECE results are released. The shock aggravates a notch higher after the release of the school placements.

This is all because the expectations of parents and candidates are not met, and the results do not portray the kind of Mock results and End of term results the candidate has been bringing home from JHS2 until the mock in many instances.

 

What Basic Schools are hiding from parents of 2022 BECE candidates: Parents Must Be Worried

If your ward is preparing for the BECE or you are a BECE candidate reading this or a teacher for that matter, know that very often the results obtained by the BECE candidate after WAEC has released it, are true reflections of the candidate’s academic strength because most often schools hide the real performance of candidates from parents by massaging the scores to paint a better performance for feat that parents may transfer their wards to another school.

Unfortunately, it looks as though Basic Schools are hiding information from parents whose wards are getting ready for the 2022 BECE candidates.

If you want to find out the performance of your ward at home, do this.

Get all the questions for each of the subjects he/she wrote in the last school mock. Ask him or her to sit and re-answer them. If the candidate cannot solve the questions, there is trouble.

Are schools actually committed to working hard to ensure 2022 BECE candidates do well in the upcoming examination, or they are interested in making money from parents?

Teachers in both public and private schools are not motivated enough to help candidates through extra support, hence they do their best. Just a handful of educators and schools give teachers extra motivation to push candidates to work harder.

After Ghana Education News conducted four successful Home Mock examinations for BECE candidates, it came to light that most of the candidates are not getting the needed support from their schools to get them ready.

Schools, especially private basic schools, are not providing parents with end-of-term results that paint the true academic picture and strength of students who pass through their hands. Public schools may also be blamed for this.

For Private Junior High Schools, one of the key issues they are interested in is the number of candidates in JHS3, which translates into school fees and other fees charged when the candidates are getting ready for the BECE in form 3.

Do our Junior High Schools inflate the scores of their BECE candidates during the end-of-the-term examinations and before sending reports to parents? Is the same thing done when BECE candidates write their various mock examinations in school?

To conduct a quick yet reliable survey, we asked educators. “Do you agree? Schools are not helping BECE candidates to prepare well for the BECE. Some hide the actual performance of candidates with inflated Termly and Mock results.”

 

What Basic Schools are hiding from parents of 2022 BECE candidates: Survey Results

Out of the 120 respondents who took part in the 24-hour survey, 65 educators representing 54% said, Yes, they agreed totally that schools are not helping BECE candidates to prepare well for the BECE. Some hide the actual performance of candidates with inflated Termly and Mock results.” Another 26% thus 31 respondents did not agree with the assertion of the survey, while another 20% (24 respondents) agreed to some extent that schools are not helping BECE candidates to prepare well for the BECE. Some hide the actual performance of candidates with inflated Termly and Mock results.

 

 

What Basic Schools are hiding from parents of 2022 BECE candidates: Motivation and Target Are Missing for Teachers and students as schools chase money and more profit

 

The above survey although was not carried out over a long period paints a worrying picture of the academic performance of candidates ahead of the BECE. Parents who base their expectations of candidates on results they bring from school may be disappointed.

Our schools especially private schools are interested in increasing enrolment in their schools and having more candidates registered for the BECE because it gives them an avenue to make more money through mock fees, inflated BECE registration fees, compulsory but often ineffective extra tuition, compulsory boarding, and housing of final year students.

Teacher monitoring and supervision have remained major challenges in schools, and teachers at the JHS may not be under tighter supervision. Where they are monitored, one needs to ask him or her what is being monitored. Monitoring is in the form of checking Attendance, Lesson note presentations, and not the results or output of the students and the teachers.

In our schools, teacher performance and evaluation do not exist. A teacher’s productivity is not measured using the academic progress report of the learner. In the public sector, the promotion of teachers is based on passing a promotion examination, which has no bearing on the teacher’s real output.

We do not even do basic trend analysis of the learner’s performance over a term, or for the entire academic year on a weekly basis to discover important trend analysis as far as their performance is concerned.

Teachers are not given targets to meet for each BECE year. Again, candidates are not inspired and challenged to set personal targets for the BECE and work towards them.

Schools are actually hiding the real academic performance of their BECE candidates right from JHS2 to ensure parents do not get dissatisfied with the school.

School owners know very well that should poor results be sent home, parents may withdraw their wards from the school.

Hence, end-of-term results and mock outcomes are manipulated to paint a better performance and picture of the candidate, who is probably weak and not really ready for the examination. This face-saving approach only shows the reality on the ground for many parents when the BECE results are released.

Blaming private basic schools for this would not be far from right, but teachers in public are also likely to do the same.

Public schools do not lose anything if a student stops school or is transferred to another school by the parents, or if the candidate does not do well.

Teachers in public schools, all things held constant, should be in a better position to help BECE candidates produce good results, however, this is really not the case in many instances. In an environment where motivation is low, what else can these teachers, many of whom are ready to give off their best.

 

 

 

Answering examination questions the right or wrong way will be a determining fact of what results a candidate will pull in the 2022 BECE.

 

It is unclear if teachers are really putting extra effort into training their BECE candidates to master the art of answering questions in each of the subjects they teach.

Question answering is an act and skill that must be taught and learned. Candidates who write the Ghana Education News Home Mock started in May 2022 cut across private and public basic schools.

Many of the candidates seem to have the problem of not knowing how to answer questions to obtain the full marks allocated.

Students keep writing one-worded answers in Social Studies, others write simple sentences as answers instead of writing self-explaining answers with examples to support.

In the end, the candidate may know the answer but lose valuable marks.

Science questions are not fully answered. Wrong terms and explanations and answers are often given which do not resemble scientific knowledge are written in Integrated Science.

Candidates sometimes solve Mathematics questions and miss several steps or use very strange-looking maths rules that make it difficult to tell if the candidate is actually ready for the subject and the BECE.

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We suggest that teachers from today pay close attention to the last three BECE chief examiner reports to help candidates do well in the upcoming BECE.

If schools do not motivate their teachers and do not set BECE result targets for candidates, they should not expect exceptional results.

If you are a parent or a teacher or a candidate, note that your last two MOCK results can tell you what you are likely to score at the BECE. Candidates must continue to work hard, but if they lose their guard, their performance will be poor.