The Municipal Chief Executive for Bolgatanga, Rex Asanga, has revealed that some schools in the Municipality have recorded zero pass rate in the Basic Education Certificate Examination.
Mr. Asanga, who admits that the infrastructure and furniture situation in many of the schools is nothing to write home about, argues that there are other human factors that result in poor performance.
“In 2021, the number of schools that had 100 percent passes were about 16. But you have as many as 4 schools that got zero passes. That’s serious. In 2023 like 17 schools that had 100 percent and then we had many as 6 schools getting zero. I think that there is a lot more to do,” he stated.
“If the kids, the parents and teachers come together despite all the circumstances that are prevailing, I’m very sure that we wouldn’t be having performance that is below 50 percent” .
This comes at a time candidates are preparing for this year’s edition which begins on the 8th of July, 2024.
A report by the University for Development Studies, UDS in 2022 revealed that public schools in the five regions of Ghana’s North always languish at the bottom of the WASSCE/BECE rankings.
The report captured that at the BECE level, the Upper West region in 2018 scored 49.7%, 48.3% in 2019 and 48% in 2020 while the Upper East region scored 52.9% both in 2018 and 2019 and scored 48.6% in 2020.
Also, in the Northern region, out of the 26 senior high schools that were presented for the final examination, 17 schools scored less than 5% and 4 schools scored 0%.
In 2019 also, 26 schools were presented for the final examination and 15 schools scored less than 5% with 1 school scoring 0%.
Speaking on the State of Our Nation as well, Rev. Simon Asige, a Retired Educationist, says he cannot understand why schools in the regional capital will score 0% pass rate.
“I have always been wondering how come that within the Municipality, we still have schools scoring zero?” he questioned.
“It is really troubling that we have within the Municipality schools scoring zero as far as the BECE is concerned”.
