10 Best-Performing Districts Scored Above 97 Per Cent in BECE Pass Rate-Report

The 10 top-performing districts with score above 97 in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) Pass Rate are found in the Northern , Western, Central, Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions, according to the 2018/2019 Ghana District League Table(DLT)II report launched in Accra on Tuesday.

The Nanumba South District, in the Northern Region ranked the highest nationally, according to the league table.

The rest were Bodi, Sefwi Akontombra, Sefwi Wiawso Municipal and Wassa Amenfi Central all in Western Region (now Western North).

Others were Ejura Sekyeredumase Municipal, Obuasi Municipal in Ashanti Region; Upper Denkyira East Municipal; and Sunyani Municipal in Brong-Ahafo

The league table is a simple ranking tool that assesses all facets of development, including education, across all the 216 metropolitan, municipal and districts nationwide.

It must be noted that the report was compiled before the country was restructured into 16 regions, hence the reference to the old regions.

The BECE Pass Rate is measured based on the percentages of pupils who passed core subjects, including English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. The average of the pass rate of the four core subjects was calculated at the district level.

It demonstrates the educational achievement level of the students who took the exams, reflecting the quality of teaching at the schools.

The Eastern and Volta regions have the highest number of low-performing districts (three each), followed by Ashanti (two districts) and G. Accra, B. Ahafo, Northern and Central (one district each).

The least performing district is the Asokore Mampong Municipality of the Ashanti Region, with a score of 10.5. The lowest scoring 10 districts for this indicator (scores equal to or less than 22) are spread across six out of the 10 regions of the country.

The report further shows that the top-performing region in terms of the "BECE Pass Rate" indicator is the Western Region followed by B. Ahafo and Ashanti Regions, while the Upper West is the lowest -scoring region below Upper East and Volta.

It added that even though Greater Accra was identified as having the lowest poverty rate among Ghana's regions (GLS79), it ranked only fourth after Ashanti in terms of BECE pass rate.

Regional and district level BECE pass rates may mask gender disparities in performance, the report said.

The BECE is the terminal exam for basic education, which all pupils in Junior High School 3, take every year to qualify for second-cycle education and it employs a 'Stanin system', which assumes a bell-curve distribution of test scores.

The results in any year can also be compared by gender and district to examine equality of outcomes.

The Gender Parity Index (GPI) in the report showed that only the Greater Accra Region achieved gender parity across all subjects.

Overall, girls underperformed compared to boys in three of the core BECE subjects - Social Studies, Mathematics and Science; and for most part outperform boys in English, the report showed.

Gender parities which disadvantage girls exist in all three Northern regions and in all four core subjects, while in the Volta Region, girls were disadvantaged in three of the core subjects - Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.

Only two regions - Eastern and Ashanti - indicated disparities which disadvantage boys in English and Social Studies respectively, the DLT added.

The GPI measures the relative performance of girls and boys in different BECE subjects at regional level and GPI equal to one indicates parity between females and males.

A value of less than one indicates a disparity which favours boys in different BECE subjects at regional level.

The UNESCO Institute of Statistics considers any value between 0.9 to 1.03 to indicate parity.

The DTL report noted that based on improvements on the methodology, a more realistic picture of social development ranking of the districts were realised, however, it cautioned drawing of conclusions from the overall ranking "due to limited number of indicators and quality of administrative data."

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