Guard against leakage of 2022 BECE question papers

Final-year pupils of junior high schools across the country on Monday, October 17, 2022, began a week-long examination that will enable them to gain admission to senior high schools when the next academic year is due.

A total of 552, 276 candidates from 18,501 schools are writing the exams.

The entry figure is made up of 276,988 males and 275,288 females.

The number of candidates that registered for this year’s BECE is 3.48 per cent less than the 2021 entry figure of 572,167.

This year’s examination is being run for both school and private candidates at 2,023 centres throughout the country.

In respect of the BECE for Private Candidates (PC), 1,132 candidates made up of 634 males and 498 females entered the examination.

It is a critical period in the educational life of these children and they need the support of all Ghanaians to see them through the stressful moments.

They have never passed through this before and will need psychological and physical support from parents, teachers, invigilators, and even siblings to enable them to surmount the seeming challenging hurdle.

Newscenta hopes the week-long academic activity will be devoid of the blemish of leakages which characterised  it in the past.

Such will be too much stress for these kids who are writing their first public examination this week, and so all must be done to ensure a leak-proof examination.

When a few candidates are given access to examination papers to give them an advantage over their colleagues, the punishment of cancellation affects the many others who would otherwise not have had such a smelly advantage.

The writing of public examination, the kind the kids are undergoing this week, is surely one of the critical acid tests for the noble attribute of honesty.

It should, therefore, not be compromised on the altar of providing a certain so-called advantage for some candidates, which long-term repercussions is bound to be counterproductive to the kids and the nation as a whole.

In view of this,  Newscenta passionately urges parents, teachers, and candidates alike to avoid this path of dishonesty as a critical means of ensuring a future where we would have honest human resources which the country can rely on in a most dignifying fashion.

When kids at this stage of their educational life are introduced to cheating, they grow up erroneously thinking that it is normal to cheat in examinations.

We stand the risk of raising kids who will grow into cheats when we ignore the drawbacks such conduct bestows upon us.

Previous candidates who were nabbed for cheating had their names and schools published in local newspapers.

We shudder to think about the psychological blow such kids would suffer seeing their names, and even pictures splashed on the pages of newspapers.

They cannot be held responsible for such misdemeanours because kids cannot, at their age, ask to be given access to examination papers unless the subject is broached by teachers and other adults, including, in some instances, parents.

It is important that we educate our kids about how to get used to preparing for examinations without relying on cheating to pass.

Let us help in protecting the integrity of public examination from this stage.