Too young to cheat
A long time ago, I attended what was called a kindergarten graduation ceremony for the child of a friend of mine in a Maryland suburb in the USA. It was complete with gowns, caps and certificates and the graduation class being called up one by one to shake hands with the guest of honour and photographs being taken with proud parents and grandparents.
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It was all I could do to keep a straight face at the ceremony as I had never up until then even heard about a kindergarten graduation, never mind attend one. I couldn’t imagine what exam a child had to fail or pass to graduate at kindergarten.
I decided it was one of the eccentricities of Americans. My friend gave me a lecture on what a significant landmark it was for a child to graduate from kindergarten.
Crucial exam
It seems we have decided that the critical stage in our education process is the stage at which the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) is taken and it is therefore regarded as the most important examination in our country.
A good performance in the BECE ensures a place in one of the leading senior high schools (SHSs) and that guarantees a place in one of the state universities and a reasonably priced and valued higher education.
Many parents recognised this long ago and have, therefore, been willing to pay over the odds at the Basic school level for their children to perform well in the BECE.
Entrepreneurs recognised this fact long ago and that explains why one of the booming sectors of the economy has been expensive private schools from kindergarten to JHS 3, to prepare children for the BECE.
A good performance at the BECE often spells the difference between a smooth path to higher education and a lifelong struggle with expensive institutions of doubtful quality. This exam has, therefore, assumed such an important status that parents and children are put under an inordinate pressure.
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In the private sector, the schools, the teachers, the heads and the proprietors feel they have to produce results that will justify the absurdly high fees they charge.
The BECE is therefore seen as a life or death matter. A colonel in the Ghana Armed Forces broke down in tears in my office because his daughter had missed by one mark the grades to get her into the SHS the two of them had set their hearts on. A carpenter who had put his daughter in a particular primary school in the hope that she would make it into his chosen senior high school, threatened suicide in my office at the Ministry of Education when his daughter missed the grade by the slenderest of margins.
There are many more BECE heartbreak stories that I could recount but probably the most dramatic one is the current one unfolding in the courts in Cape Coast. According to the reports in the newspapers, a mother is alleged to have brought her twin daughters to one of the leading SHSs with BECE result slips that showed the girls had both achieved spectacular high marks. They have been put before court because the results were fraudulent.
The cheating phenomenon
I was trying to get my head around the reality of a mother faking the exam results of her 14-year-olds when the news broke about the wholesale leaking of the core subjects of the BECE exam and the consequent cancellation.
I know that cheating in exam is a worldwide phenomenon. The Americans for example are currently having to unravel an organised and large-scale cheating ring at the SAT in China that has threatened to undermine the selection into their top universities.
But I think I have been in despair because of the level at which the cheating is going on in our country. If, as it appears, the examination board, West African Examinations Council (WAEC), the schools, teachers and the children are all allegedly involved (in the leaking of questions) at the basic school level, then we have a problem.
It seems to me the BECE has assumed this exaggerated aura of importance because that is the exam that takes you to the 40 or so senior high schools that produce all the engineers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals in the country.
Changing the situation
The answer surely must be to increase the number of SHSs that produce good results and are thus attractive to students and their parents. That was the thinking behind the Kufuor administration’s decision to upgrade and provide a good quality SHS in each district.
There will always be competition and examination nerves in schools but it is ridiculous that our big exam should be at the BECE level. It is not fair on the children and it is undermining the integrity of parents. We should take it up one level higher to the SHS exam if we must have examination collective hysteria.
Surely the children in France who sit the Baccalaureate have found a better way of dealing with the pressures of an exam and we might all learn a few lessons from them. The French students now send a petition to protest against any paper that they deem to have been difficult in the examination. This year, thousands of them have signed a petition claiming that a question about a set book in their baccalaureate English paper was “impossible” and they want the education minister to instruct examiners not to count the marks, or lack thereof.
The exam asked pupils to read a passage from ‘’Atonement’’ and complete two questions about how a character copes with being accused of rape. Arthur, a 17-year-old French student who organised the petition, was quoted as telling a television station: “Many people didn’t understand the word ‘coping’; it’s not a very common word.”
The petition complained: “The majority of students in the bac were not able to answer question M because they found it too difficult”. “It is totally inadmissible to propose a bac subject with incomprehensible questions that are impossible to answer.”
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Coping with the stress
But of course not all the children found the paper too difficult. Some of them have said loudly that it was lamentable and “totally wrong” to sign a petition that the question seemed too hard. One student pointed out that “coping” was hardly in the same league of difficult English words as “comeuppance.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. If you don’t know what ‘coping with’ means, that’s your problem.”
If our big exam comes at the end of senior high school, our children will be better able to cope with the stress of competition and find a way of dealing with difficult questions instead of cheating. Free compulsory senior high school; that is the answer. We have all heard that some place surely.