The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwah, has admonished crestfallen candidates writing this year’s West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) to compose themselves and write the remainder of the exam and come out with flying colours.
His comment comes in the wake of viral videos on social media which capture some WASSCE candidates expressing their disappointment in President Nana Akufo-Addo over what they described as difficult exam questions.
The students, who had been supplied lots of past questions to study by the government to prepare them for the WASSC, were expecting to see some of the past questions being asked in the final examination but none has so far appeared.
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The disappointed candidates accused the President of deceiving them and have vowed to teach him a lesson by voting him out come December 7 general election.
But, the Ghana Education Service (GES) Director-General, Prof. Amankwah, has stated that it was never the intention of the government to buy the real exam questions locally known as ‘apo’ for the students.
He added that the past questions supplied the students were only intended to adequately prepare them for the final exam.
“Past questions don’t mean that you have to have ‘dito dito’ exactly what is in the past questions. It prepares you, gives you an idea of the things that are likely to come, the pattern of certain questions, and how to answer them. The past questions that we gave them were actually something that we worked with West African Examination Council (WAEC) such that it included the Chief Examiner’s report,” Prof. Amankwah told Joy FM in an interview.
The GES in November 2019, procured 400,000 sets of questions and answer booklets from WAEC, for distribution to the first batch of beneficiaries of the Free Senior High School Policy.
According to the Head of Public Affairs at the Ministry of Education, Vincent Ekow Assafuah, the procurement of the past questions was needful since it would guide the students in their preparations and help them excel in their exam.