WASSCE Date Change Will Produce Better Results – MoE

The Ministry of Education (MoE) has said it is hopeful the decision to push the West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Exams (WASSCE) to the month of May will lead to better performance among candidates.

Starting next year, final year Senior High School (SHS) candidates will commence the exams in May instead of February.

This follows a request by the Education Ministry for the examining body to extend the start date in order to allow candidates time to adequately prepare for the exams.

Speaking to Class News’ Ekow Annan, Deputy Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum said the Ministry wants students to have more time to study.

He said: “Exams are not going to begin in February, so, it will be delayed and moved back. The last testing day will be June 1, which has never happened for many years. When we were going to school, it was June, so, the Minister wrote to the West Africa Examination Council to make sure they can push things so that the exams will be [written in the months of] May and June and they said this year, they could not do that because of other countries who are involved in this. We are not the only examining country so for us to be able to do that, we have to actually work with other countries. So next year, we are asking them that we want to do May-June and not February, March and April.”

He noted that the rationale behind the decision is that: “We want students to have more time to study because over the years, after three years of SHS, three years actually became two years and three months because first of all, students were not placed early enough. This is the first time in many years where students started school in September. In addition to that, we have also realised that when examination begins in February, you’ve taken away four to five months, so in essence, you have reduced the instructional period to about two years and two months.”

Source: ClassFMonline