By Prince J. Musa in Kenema
The Kenema District Coordinator of the Free Quality Education (FQE), Abdul Karim Vangahun, has expressed disappointment over the performance of government and Government Assisted Schools in the just released West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results.
Analyzing the results, the Minister of Basic and Senior School Education, Dr. Moinina David Sengeh, noted that 151, 000 candidates took the examination, of which 8% of the results were withheld because of examination malpractice. While over 6, 000 candidates, representing 4.5%, got university requirement with a minimum of five credit.
Like the National Primary School Examination, this year’s WASSCE was topped by a female candidate, Sophia Kelson-Sesay of the Sierra Leone Modern High School with a total of nine subjects passes with four As, one B2, three B3 and one credit. She is followed closely behind by a male candidate, Abdul Aziz Bangura of Providence International High School and Alex Bubble John Kanu of the Sierra Leone Grammar School.
These results have generated a heated national debate on social media on the failure of the candidates and the results being withheld by the examiners.
In an interview with Politico, Abdul Karim Vangahun disclosed that as stakeholders in the education sector, they were worried about the fact that the government schools are not doing well in public examinations.
He stated that government is spending huge amount of resources on the free quality education, noting that it’s expected that government schools should come out with excellent results,” he said.
A private school in Kenema District, the Kambui Lebanese School, came first in the district for this year’s WASSCE.
Vangahun noted lack of proper monitoring of teachers by heads of schools as a contributing factor to the poor performance of government schools.
“We need to go back to the drawing board to ask ourselves were the problem lies. Though teachers that do teach at private schools are coming from government schools, still our schools are not doing much as expected of them. If we are to apportion blames, principals, parents and children themselves should be blamed,” he noted.
Vangahun called on the government to enforce the education policy for principals and head teachers going back to classroom to teach as that will serve as motivation for teachers to take their work seriously. He went on to note that Covid-19 has affected the academic calendar for those currently in senior school examination class.
“They have not covered many topics, especially for the art stream, since all the literature texts have been changed and most schools don’t have equipped labs for science subjects for practical works,” he observed.
Chairman, Conference of Principles, Septimus Vandi, could not speak on the result because he said it was yet to reach the schools.
Alhaji Mustapha Lome, a candidate who sat to the WASSCE examination from Methodist secondary school Kenema, blames the poor performance on the teachers and invigilators due to the pressure they put on them during examination.
“I have not checked for my result yet, but some of our teachers were not much committed to their task, some only goes to class as they feel, not how it is expected of them,” he added.
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