GES institues compulsory extra classes

Story: Hadiza Nuhhu-Billa Quansah
The Ghana Education Service (GES) is to institute compulsory extra classes for all Form Three students in public junior high schools (JHS) to prepare them adequately for next year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
The classes will be held two hours daily after the normal closing hours including Saturday mornings. Currently it is left with barely four months for candidates to write the 20I2 BECE.
This was disclosed to the Junior Graphic in an interview with the Deputy Director General of Education, Mr Stephen Adu. He said to make this successful, a special task force had been set up by the GES in the regions and districts to monitor the attendance of teachers and the performance of students as a whole.
“It has come to the notice of the GES that some of the JHS candidates do not attend school immediately they are registered for the BECE. They only appear at the last minute to write their papers and this translates to poor results, bringing the entire performance of the schools and diistricts down,” he disclosed.
Mr Adu said it was disheartening to see how excellently most of the private schools perform each year in the BECE as compared to the poor output by most public schools. He attributed the abysmal performance of students to the apathy exhibited by parents of students in the public schools.
“Most parents who have their children in the public schools do not take keen interest in their educational progression. They simply do not make the effort to visit the school to find out whether the child attend school regularly or how they perform in the various subjects. Every responsibility has been left in the hands of the teachers which is wrong”.he stressed
He said the classes would be intensified in the districts where candidates had zero per cent in the BECE. “In some of the farming areas and busy trading centres, parents prefer to send their children to farm or sell before coming to school. As a result, they end up being tired and sleepy during classes,”
He called on parents to support the effort to improve on the quality of education in public schools.
Mr Adu said apart from the JHS students, those in the lower primary school would be taught in the Ghanaian languages for a better understanding and appreciation of subjects like Science and Mathematics which most children find difficult to grasp at the foundation. “This would give them better understanding when they get to the Upper Primary and also enable them to produce very good results in future”.