Is it education or examination: An evidence based analysis?

Talk about the result of the 2023 West Africa Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) should not be wish-washed by any strand of imagination. Any attempt at emotional commentary rather than hard thinking to distill solutions to achieving proper definition of education will not only be a sin but a calculated attempt to the detriment of the youth and the country at large.

The analysis in this article other than the many social commentary flown about on the subject matter, I took the painstaking task to engage students from various schools both adherents of the 2023 WASSCE and continuous Senior High School (SHS) students on their experiences during the 2023 WASSCE.

What is education?    

An attempt at strictly defining education will make this article one of a journal paper rather than to express the reality on the ground as played by the political symphony to the discord of many who seek real education to life and national development. In the real sense of the word, the purpose of education is to develop the potential of its adherents that translate into national development.

The sense to which education is good reflects in the development of the nation. Because we as a country have failed to develop our education to the levels that can support our national development to the desired standards of advanced countries, we seek help from developed countries. Particularly, educational help from developed countries aims to help the youth for benefit access to quality education and skills that propels them for lifelong learning.

Following from the immediate paragraph above, examination does not and cannot precede education. In our current national political gymnastics, our government is using examination to determine educational quality when in actual sense engagements with students on their education shows a vast disarray.

In effect, Ghana has sought to define its own educational standards contrary to the world’s standard. In Ghana today, quality education means the percentage of WASSCE score when it is trite that the particular year which government claim to have produced the best WASSCE result ironically is the year that the country suffered most in educational resources (material and human).

Why Ghana should not mislead its youth in education       

Simply put, education is a human right and a pivot to attaining many of the sustainable development goals. This means that without quality education, Ghana is exposed to many developmental deficiencies thereby hampering the human right of the people. The extreme economic hardship faced by many in Ghana in recent times is a result of its poor education. This phenomenon will grow worst if nothing is done immediately to avert the course of the country’s educational direction.

The current situation where government’s concern for education is mainly at the senior high school level is nothing but politics of deceit aimed at targeting senior high school leavers particularly in election years to vote for the government. This is not only a cardinal sin but also monstrous deception well calculated to destroy the future of the youth by which time the perpetrators would have enjoyed their booty and died.

Proper education focuses from basic education, which gives early start to children to acquire the needed knowledge and skills to face everyday challenges that drives them to a preparatory stage to take advantage of a better future. In addition, quality education helps in reducing poverty, nurturing economic growth, accomplishing gender equality and social progress.

Analysis of the 2023 WASSCE results

I will say for the millionth time that the Free Senior High School (FreeSHS) policy is very good and thanks to the constitutional provision in Article 25 of the 1992 Constitution, that states in part:

• All persons shall have the right to equal educational opportunities and facilities and with a view to achieving the full realization of that right –

(b) Secondary education in its different forms, including technical and vocational education, shall be made generally available and accessible to all by every appropriate means, and in particular, by the progressive introduction of free education.

For the fact that the present government sneaked such constitutional provision into a campaign manifesto and misappropriated, its implementation is nothing but a clandestine attempt to deceive Ghanaians into believing that they have an original idea with good intention when in actual sense they do not. This palpable false attempt has rendered government into resolving to made-up examination result rather than quality education.

Government can never achieve quality public school education in as much as Article 25(1) is not fully in place particularly educational facilities (material and human). In my engagements with various 2023 SHS leavers and continuous SHS students, I came up with five (5) pointers that accounted for the 2023 examination result as follows;

One, supervisor aided examination – it emerged that in some of the schools, some examination supervisors aided the students in answering examination questions rendering the examination not independent and not fair. This attempt is usually financially motivated hence a perpetration of fraud which is criminal when brought to book and found culpable.

Some students of the same schools who did not receive such help from the supervisors in the same examination felt cheated by upper hands. The consequence in allowing a section of examination candidates to cheat the other section has huge repercussion on the outcome of the examination result.

Of students’ testimony of supervisor aided examination, the 2023 WASSCE result cannot be classified as a fair and true reflection of students’ performance. Let us not be deceived those students will be exposed at the university and eventually a telling effect on national development.

Two, internet aided examination – a shocking revelation was the use of mobile phones during the 2023 WASSCE. I was shocked to the marrow when a student told me that in one of the examination papers a mobile phone rang in the hall to the hearing of all in the examination hall.

A further enquiry revealed that immediately a paper starts, the questions and answers starts pouring on social media platforms particularly telegram. These are usually pay platforms where students register to orchestrate the cheating escapades.

Sometimes the ability for students’ to use mobile phones in examinations are aided by some supervisors who are paid and/or have interest in particular students’ outcome; such acts when successful should not be counted as good students’ performance.

Three, peer to peer aided examination – this act can easily be classified as normal and must not be termed examination malpractice. An exception can be made to this practice to the extent that it is kept at the barest minimum levels but not in instances analogous to where an excellent student who participated in the National Science and Maths Quiz (NSMQ) Competition is allowed to solve examination questions and pass the answers around for all to copy.

Four, remedial school aided examination – these schools are nothing but avenues for gigantic examination scandals. Their specialty is a mastery of aiding students in examination cheating. They must not be made to flourish as they aid in breeding corrupt youth who will grow up to manifest corruption as a normal ways of progress in life.

The deceptive practices of such students will metamorphose when they enter into public life. No wonder a cursory look at many corrupt public officials proves that they nurtured such practice from secondary school.

Many of these remedial schools are outside the capital city. Suddenly parents sends their wards there for re-sit of their examination. The school authorities or teacher made contacts by identifying rich parents who pay heftily for their wards to be helped through heaven, and hell means to pass.

Last but not the least is parents aided examination – sadly such parental help is not to motivate, inspire and enforce the strict learning of their wards to pass genuinely but rather full actors in conspiracy with their children and third parties to effect examination malpractice for their wards to pass.

Haven analyzed the five (5) reasons above that accounts for the 2023 WASSCE results though one of the best results yet one of the most corruptly attained result per the analyses adduced. Politics of education will earn us a bad footnote as it will only make political expediency but will not reflect in the life of the supposed educated hence; national development.

All five (5) aided examination malpractices have political undertones. In the words of Wordsworth ‘‘…what man has made of man.’’ It is another election year and government as usual will play all the political gimmicks with education including false inducement of freebies to students to buy their conscience to vote for them.

Political parties will come and go; some with good intentions for development and others with bad motives for personal gains and to some extent family and friends. If we want Ghana to grow qualitatively particularly through education, then we must consciously removes politics of deceit from our education sector.

It must be quality education and not deceitful examination results else in the end, we will continue to be in the abyss of development; wallowing in mass poverty, deprivation and the forfeiture of our basic human rights to the joy of few destructive politicians.

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