JHS 3 students express worry over teachers’ strike amid 2024 BECE

Prospective final-year Junior High School (JHS) students preparing for the upcoming 2024 edition of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) have expressed concern over the ongoing strike action by teachers.

Slated for July 8 to July 12, 2024, the BECE candidates say the industrial action embarked on by teachers is likely to affect their preparation for the national examination, a situation they said could lead to their failure in the examination.

Speaking to JoyNews, a third-year student at St. Paul RC Basic School at Caprice, Accra, Samuel, said that without the guidance of his teachers, he might not be adequately prepared for the 32nd edition of the BECE for School Candidates.

“We have only three months left to write our BECE, and if there are no teachers, how are we going to write our BECE? So we need teachers to come and help us learn to pass our BECE examination,” the BECE candidate told a journalist.

A colleague female student of Samuel in the same school added that schools now close earlier than usual, while students have been advised to study on their own.

“We are going home because of the strike, and we were told to learn on our own. Our seniors in JHS three came to watch over us while we studied, and we are coming to write exams soon. If we don’t learn too, we will fail,” she claimed.

The Junior High School students have urged the Ministry of Education under the auspices of the government to promptly address the teachers’ concerns to ensure that teaching and learning can resume and to prevent mass exam failures.

The BECE student’s appeal comes after three teacher unions on March 20, 2024, declared a nationwide strike action to register their displeasure with the unsatisfactory conditions of service the central government has ignored to improve.

The three striking teacher unions are; the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the Ghana National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers Ghana (CCT-GH).

They say the government had failed to renew its collective agreement, among other concerns, following its expiration in 2023 adding that since all efforts to get the government to the negotiation table have proven futile, laying down their tools was their last resort.