15% BECE graduates failed to honour their SHS admission – Report

About 15 per cent of BECE graduates who qualified for school placement failed to honour their admission into second-cycle schools in the 2022/2023 academic year, education think tank – Africa Education Watch (EduWatch) has said.

The Watch in its report sighted by Thisterm.com attributed the students who sat for the 2023 Basic Education Certificate Examination’s failure to honour admission to the high cost of prospectuses and other education materials.

“Financial constraints contributed to a 15 per cent failure of candidates to honour their admission in 2022. It attributed the failure to honour admission to the high cost of prospectuses and other education materials,” EduWatch said.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education (MoE) this academic year has introduced what it calls the national or harmonised prospectus for 2023 BECE graduates to be admitted into various public Senior High Schools as first-year students.

The Director-General of the Service, Dr Eric Nkansah in an interview with Daily Graphic said the first-year Senior High School students’ prospectus is categorised into basic needs and cleaning materials to make it easier for parents.

The harmonised prospectus, Dr Nkansah said, was necessary to eliminate items that schools could do without and also ensure that schools did not include such items and use same as a barrier to the timely enrolment of students.

He cautioned heads of various second-cycle schools not to admit students based on their ability to procure all the items, but urged parents to try and procure the items as outlined in the prospectus, “because we have reduced the list to the barest minimum.”

He said the cost of the items in the second cycle school prospectus was within the reach of all parents and was convinced that the situation where parents spent a fortune on a prospectus belonged to the past.

The national prospectus, he said was put together by a committee made up of representatives from the GES, Free SHS Secretariat, and TVET Service, with the Conference of Heads of Government Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) also making an input.

The Ghana Education Service Director-General advised the 2023 BECE graduates to be admitted into second-cycle institutions to ensure that all personal items were embossed or embroidered with their names to avoid getting their items stolen.