The concerns that have been raised by some players in the private pre-tertiary education sector that private schools may be deliberately marked down at the 2021 BECE may not be tenable. This is according to the Director for the Golden Step Academy, Robert Atia.
It would be recalled that the Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNCOP), called for an independent probe into the marking of scripts of Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates from private schools.
Candidates in private schools often do much better than their counterparts in public schools, but the Council argued that private school candidates are being deliberately marked down in the BECE to give candidates from public schools an upper hand.
The President of GNACOP, Enoch Gyetuah, in an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show, said the discrimination has resulted in the challenges many parents whose wards registered for the BECE with private schools are facing.
But speaking on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, Mr. Atia said the claim made by the Council may be far fetched because private schools have relatively maintained the standard of performance.
He continued to say that some adjustments had been made to the 2021 BECE marking scheme. The new scheme stated that a student to score ‘1’ in a subject, the student should have obtained 90 and above and “if the same scheme was applied to both the public and the private schools, I do not see how that will happen. I do not see how it is possible for government to use the new grading system for the private schools and use the old one for the public schools”.
Mr. Atia insisted that once proper studies or research has not been done to prove that private schools were deliberately marked down, the claims cannot continue to be made.
A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
