GES Clarifies: 2023 BECE Not The Last
The Ghana Education Service (GES) has clarified that this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) doesn’t mark an end to the national examination regime.
This was in response to what the Service called an “error” by TV3 in their news bulletin on Monday. The misinformation appears to be all over in the media and among students.
A publication by ghanaeducation.org seven months ago also peddled the same news with a part of its saying, “The 2023 BECE would be the last in history since the Junior High School system was introduced in Ghana.”
But the GES debunks these reports.
In a Facebook post on August 7, it said, “TV3 Ghana This is not the last BECE. Kindly correct this error on your #NEWS360. Thank you.”
In June, the Director-General of the GES, Dr Eric Nkansah, explained students who are currently in JHS 2 will sit the 33-year-old national examination but would sit for the exam under the new standard-based curriculum.
“The BECE is not cancelled, we are writing and even those who are in junior high school (JHS) 2 will also write,” the Director-General of the GES, Dr Eric Nkansah, is quoted to have said in response to a comment from a member of the audience at a forum organised by the West African Examinations Council on the BECE Grading System in Accra.
Misunderstanding
The misunderstanding resulted from a directive issued by the GES in January to the effect that heads of public basic schools must promote all JHS 2 students who were due for JHS3 this academic year.
The directive, the GES said, came after its attention was drawn to the fact that some heads had repeated some students due to progress to JHS3.
The management of GES took serious exception to the practice because the current JHS three students were the last batch of the objective-based curriculum candidates who would write the final BECE under the said syllabus this year, a report by Graphic Online says.
According to the GES, students who were promoted to JHS 2 this year were, therefore, going to be the first batch of candidates who would write BECE in 2024 using the new standard-based curriculum.
BECE was introduced in 1990 after the introduction of the Junior Secondary School (JSS) system on September 1, 1987.
