Another opportunity beckons BECE candidates

Candidates in this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) return to the examination hall today and tomorrow to rewrite five subject papers.

For their selfish interest, certain unscrupulous persons leaked five of the papers of the BECE. The West African Examination Council (WAEC) had no choice but to cancel the papers thus imposing additional burden on the BECE candidates and their parents.

News of the cancellation certainly broke the hearts of not only parents and guardians but the candidates in particular. Indeed, news of the cancellation shocked the entire nation. In fact, some of the candidates did not even want to believe the news was real.

Disappointing as it was, the final hour has come for the students to redefine their future, which was nearly marred about two weeks ago.
We know the pain and the psychological trauma that the candidates have gone through. There were calls for the WAEC to give the candidates ample time not just to study but to psych the students up for the rewrite.

Moreover, the time frame to rewrite the five papers is also too short. Even under the normal examination schedule, the candidates were writing two papers in a day.

However, in the case of the rewrite, the candidates are writing five subject papers in two days. Three of the papers would be written today and the remaining three on Tuesday.

It has not been easy, but we urge them to resolve to put the trauma behind them and give of their best. After all, the questions for the rewrite papers will still come from the syllabus or prescribed course for the BECE.

Also, some educationists have advocated counselling for the candidates before the rewrite and we wonder how many schools or parents took their children through counselling. All the same, we encourage the students to take heart in the two-day examination.

While encouraging the candidates to be motivated to give of their best, the Daily Graphic also believes that it is high time that the educational authorities took a bold decision to review the number of examinable subjects at the basic level.

The WAEC must also do an institutional soul-searching to deal with the loopholes in the system. The WAEC committed a serious blunder when it administered a 2016 WASSCE paper for candidates taking a 2015 examination.

This cannot be good enough for the image of the examining body and we believe its leaders must take measures to ensure better ways of conducting examinations.

The Daily Graphic urges the BECE candidates to forget about the trauma and confront the papers with all seriousness in order to come out with flying colours.

We urge the authorities to deal with all those who have brought us to this stage to bring an end to examination leakages in the country.