Former Director General of the Ghana Education Service, Mr. Michael Nsowah has blamed the failure of students in huge numbers in Science and Mathematics in this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) on the high number of topics students are expected to treat before their examination.
Over 99,000 students out of 268,812 who sat for the examination failed in Mathematics and Science with some recording F9 in both subjects.
[contextly_sidebar id=”s7O0dbB2Q0AqtPT3cQwXYfKlUXPRfdOB”]But Mr. Nsowah said he was not surprised at this outcome because he had reviewed the syllabus for Integrated Science and his conclusion was that there were too many areas to be covered by the students before the examination.
“In fact, I am not surprised about the turn of events now especially in Intergrated Science. I have studied the details of the syllabus and it is too loaded. For you to write exams you need to complete a certain number of years which has been stipulated. The WASSCE syllabus must cover a three year period at the end of which you write exams because it is built-in,” he said.
The Experienced Educationist further bemoaned the short duration of the Senior High School course adding that this compounded the problem for the students.
He further stated “We all know that these students do not spend three years or nine terms as it is expected, they spend seven terms in school so to begin with they have problems with coverage.”
Results released by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) indicate that 29.75% of students who sat for this year’s WASSCE had D7-E8 and 37.17% had F9 in Core Mathematics while that of Integrated Science also revealed that 39.19% got D7-E8 and 37.17% had F9.
Meanwhile, WAEC has cancelled the entire results of 453 students who took part in this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
According to WAEC, they are also investigating 119 schools for engaging in mass cheating during the exams. The council has also withheld results of candidates from 185 secondary schools for “alleged examination irregularities.
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By: Duke Mensah Opoku/citifmonline.com/Ghana