About 500 Heads of Senior High Schools (SHS) across the country have met at the Anglican Senior High School in the Kumasi Metropolis to brainstorm over the poor performance of some schools in the West Africa Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
The school heads are those whose institutions (public and private) have been performing abysmally in the international exams conducted by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC).
According to the Ministry of Education, in spite of the significant investment to improve performance in both public and private SHS, the pace of progress has been below expectation.
Assessment of WASSCE results has revealed that the proportion of students who qualify for tertiary education increased from 10.58% in 2007 and peaked at 31.19% in 2012.
Although general performance has improved, the assessment which was conducted by the Ministry of Education further revealed that performance in mathematics and science has been poor.
The results also revealed that poor performance by private senior high schools contribute immensely to poor national performance in WASSCE.
Records from WAEC indicate that many private senior high schools consistently record very high failure rates in WASSCE.
Some of these private schools do not have qualified teachers to teach and prepare the students adequately for WASSCE.
The Ministry of Education’s engagement with the heads of the schools was therefore meant to dialogue and devise strategies to improve on performance.
Among the things being discussed by the participants are the causes of poor performance from the perspective of WAEC and of students; the responsibilities of the heads of schools in the performance improvement of their students and their role in preparing them for WASSCE.
The engagement was also meant to orient the heads of schools on effective leadership and management at the school level.
Experiences of heads of schools that have deployed strategies to record improvement in the performance of their schools were also shared.
Presentations were made on why students perform poorly and factors school management must consider in preparing students for WASSCE.
Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Jacob A. M. Kor, commenting on the forum said the objective of the engagement is to afford the heads of schools to learn new strategies and deploy them in their schools to prepare their students for WASSCE 2016 and beyond.
He implored on the heads of the schools to be proactive in preparing the students well for examinations.
