The Deputy Ranking Member for the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education and Member of Parliament for Builsa South, Dr. Clement Apaak has called for a full audit of the processes leading up to the writing of the National Standardised Test.
He alleged that not all 550,000 students slated for the National Standardised Test (NST) could participate due to poor planning on the part of the Ministry of Education.
He said teachers and students were put at risk while materials for the test could not get to certain centres on time.
The Legislator in the statement copied to A1 Radio claimed that the NST was fraught with challenges explaining that “some pupils wrote the test at night with flashlights”. The MP for Builsa South argued that if the Ministry had resource constraints, it would have been logical to postpone the NST.
“Reports emerging suggest that the maiden National Standardised Test (NST) for primary 4 pupils was poorly organised. The nationwide NST under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service (GES) took place on Friday, 17 December 2021, for all Primary 4 pupils in public schools across the country. About 550,000 Primary 4 pupils were expected to take part in the test across the various centres. However, there are indications that not all pupils took the test due to the inadequate arrangements and poor planning,” he said.
He said while the NST in itself was not a terrible idea, the processes leading up to it could have been better.
“There is nothing wrong with testing pupils in Literacy and Numeracy as a basis of obtaining feedback to assist with the appropriate interventions required to correct learning deficiency at the early stages. However, if due to poor planning and arrangement the test takers feel anxious, tortured, tormented, traumatised and exposed to danger, it defeats the purpose of the exercise. How do you get the right feedback from students who were not assessed in a conducive context?” he quizzed.
Dr. Apaak contended that due to the inadequacies on the part of the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, the West African Examination Council had to intervene to see to the implementation of the NST.
“It was obvious that the Ministry of Education and its agency GES had not prepared adequately, and rather than postponing the test, they abandoned the original concept of the class 4 pupils writing the NST institutions, that is, in their original schools and classrooms. To cover up the inadequacy in preparation, the Ministry brought in WAEC to conduct the NST. This is what resulted in the use of cluster centres through the WAEC format, where a number of pupils were moved from thier schools to centres to take the test,” he said.
Dr. Apaak disclosed that calls by the Education Select Committee in Parliament for the NST to be postponed fell on deaf ears. He thus called for a full audit of the entire process.
Meanwhile, the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) has expressed disappointment at the exclusion of private school children from the maiden National Standardised Test (NST) which was conducted on December 17, 2021.
This was contained in a statement signed and copied to A1 Radio by the President of GNAPS Dr Damasus Tuurosong. GNAPs wondered whether the exclusion of the private schools in the NST was a move by government to make the private education system look less attractive to Ghanaians students and parents.
A1Radioonline.com|101.1MHz| Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
