Persons attributing the good performance in the 2023 West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) to the free senior high school policy to show scientific findings for their analysis, the Executive Secretary of the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST-Ghana), Dr Peter Partey Anti, has said.
He says he gets worried when professional evaluators make these assertions without providing a scientific basis.
Dr Patey Anti intimated that although the results of the 2023 WASSCE look good there is a need to focus on the performance of the individual schools and the students.
He said assessing the performance of the individual schools and students will determine whether they actually performed or not.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) released the results on Monday, December 18.
“The Council will make available login details to heads of school to enable them to access the results of their candidates. The results have been hosted online and candidates who so desire may access their results at the Council’s website www.waecgh.org,” the release stated.
The Council cautioned “all its stakeholders to be wary of fraudsters who promise to upgrade results for a fee.”
The Council expressed its sincerest gratitude to stakeholders “especially the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service, the Security Agencies, Heads of School, Supervisors, Invigilators, Examiners and all who in various ways supported it in the successful conduct of the examination and release of results.”
Speaking on the Ghana Tonight show on TV3 Monday, December 18, Dr Peter Parte Anti said “I think we have seen considerable progress as all of us are saying in the results that have been released, as you compared it to previous years.
“My only problem is that normally academics like myself do not do these kinds of analyses in a vacuum. We need not just look at the average figures that have been presented, you need to delve deeper into the data and find out how individual schools are doing and how individual students are also performing, that is the only point that you will note that the results are really what we think they are.
“We also have to look at the individual’s performance in relation to their various elective subjects. You will agree with me that you need a pass in three core subjects to be able to pursue tertiary education but at the same time, you need a pass in three elective subjects.
“So if you don’t get the pass in your electives and you are passing your core subjects it still means you will not be able to access tertiary education as you so wished to, so these are the issues we need to understand. The figures look good but let us look at the performance of individual schools and then the performance of students within these schools.
“That is why when people want to ascribe the performance of the students in WASSCE to the free SHS, some of us, get a little worried because no evaluator, I mean the professional ones, would want to single out a policy and say it is because of this intervention that is why we are having this outcome when that person has not scientifically proven that that is really what is happening.”