Rev Davies
By Mustapha Sesay and Crispina Cummings
The rippled effects of the new method of selecting candidates for the school-leaving WASSCE exams are reverberating with the latest being heads of private schools.
The Proprietor of one such school, Dynamic International School at Murray Town, yesterday called at the Politico office in the company of other private school administrators affected by the new education policy.
Rev. Victor Davies challenged the way he said the new policy was being implemented.
“We are not against the idea that pupils should have five subjects in the BECE before they are allowed to attempt the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE), but we are against the implementation and the way the matter is being communicated” Rev Davies complained.
He said some pupils were “over-qualified and have aggregates 12, 17 and 20 inclusive of English Language and Mathematics" but that they had been disallowed from writing the WASSCE exams, pointing out that they were not officially informed in writing as to why the pupils had been rejected, rather, “even the qualified pupils as prescribed by the ministry have been branded unqualified, thus giving a misconception to the public.”
He stated that they had made all efforts to meet with the minister but in all of such meetings “we were shouted upon and humiliated and there has been no successful outcome”.
Rev. Davies said the exams council in Freetown, WAEC, had asked them to pay for their entrants and which they had already done and alleged that over 30,000 pupils from over 60 schools would be disqualified if the situation was not reversed.
He called on the minister and the government to “rethink their decision in the interest of the pupils and the nation as a whole”, adding that some of the pupils should have written their WASSCE exams but for the introduction of the SSS4 which "has completely disrupted their progress".
For his part, Minister of Education, Dr Minkailu Bah told parliament that “it is in Sierra Leone that when someone catches a thief, he becomes a criminal and it is in Sierra Leone that when someone tries to enforce the law he is a wicked person". He justified the policy of rejecting thousands of candidates throughout the country as an enforcement of a 10-year-old law and the recommendations of the Prof. Gbamanja commission of enquiry set up to investigate what was responsible for the massive failure in the WASCE and BECE examinations in 2010.
Dr Bah said section 15 of the Education Act 2004 states that senior secondary school requirement was five passes including either Maths or English, adding that every school was informed and meetings called on the issue. He said that in August 2013 a conference of principals was called where principals were informed and advised to pass on the information to pupils as it was not the responsibility of the minister but the principals.
(C) Politico 13/02/14
