The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has held a forum to discuss and explain the fundamentals of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) grading system in Accra.
The forum was held to introduce the BECE marking scheme to the public and to disabuse the minds of the public that WAEC has separate marking schemes for public and private schools.
The forum was held after a recent rejoinder issued by the WAEC office to an article that alleged that the Council is using two different marking schemes, one for private schools and the other for public schools.
The Head of the National Examinations Administration Department of WAEC, Wendy Enyonam Addy-Lamptey, said the core objective of the forum was to make it clear to the public that the grading system is fair and not biased.
She said, “having a grade 9 is not an indication that the student has failed but rather specifies their potential”.
The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Dr. Eric Nkansah also made it clear to the public sentiment of the cancellation of the BECE .
”BECE has not been cancelled and will not be cancelled, those in JHS 2 will write BECE and it will continue”.
A former staff of WAEC and educational researcher at the University of Cape Coast, Prof. Kafui Etsey said the stanine grading system used by WAEC for the selection and segregation of results of candidates puts the scores in an ascending order, changes raw scores obtained but not the percentages.
Therefore, “changing from BECE to the Criteria Reference system will only lead to more failures” He said.
The BECE grading system focuses on the normal 70% and 30% scores, which constitutes the mean of the scores and standard deviation of the scores, as well as the external scores.
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By: Ubaida Awudu
