Supervisors persuade pregnant BECE candidates to sit exams

SUPERVISORS of the Ho West Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES) have succeeded in convincing three pregnant Basic Certificate Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates and a lactating mother to make themselves available to sit their papers.

The directorate dispatched the supervisors last Monday to go after the absentee pregnant candidates when the BECE started.

The District Director of Education, Francis Yao Agbemadi, said the supervisors were unable to find two of the pregnant candidates because they had relocated.

He explained that the directorate’s stance to bring the pregnant candidates to the examination centres was based on the government’s Re-Entry Policy which was also meant to benefit pregnant examination candidates.

According to him, one of the pregnant girls, who was initially restrained from writing the papers by her partner who asked her to rather stay at home and look after his ailing mother, was now writing her papers.

He said the absentee candidates were registered at the Kpedze and Abutia-Kloe centres.

Pregnancy not a crime
Mr Agbemadi made it clear that getting pregnant at the time of BECE was not a crime and that also did not signify the end of the road for the examination candidate.

In all, 1,410 candidates, made up 746 boys and 673 girls from 62 schools in the district, registered for the examinations taking place at six centres.

The district director of education said the examination materials arrived at the various centres as scheduled last Monday and the examinations took off smoothly.

Meanwhile, in the Afadzato South District, all the five pregnant girls among the 1,281 candidates from 56 schools turned up for the examinations.

The examinations took off without any hitch at the Leklebi, Ve-Golokuati, Agate and Logba centres.