There’ll be Legal Action Against you; NAGRAT Chairman Warns GES over JHS 1 & 2 Absentee List Compilation
There’ll be Legal Action Against you; NAGRAT Chairman Warns GES over JHS 1 & 2 Absentee List Compilation
The Upper East Regional Chairman of the National Graduate Teachers Association (NAGRAT), John Akunzebe says there is no law in the country prohibiting JHS 1 and 2 students from sitting the Basic Education Certificate Examination.
Speaking in an interview on Breakfast Today on Dreamz FM, John Akunzebe notes that although the Ghana Education Service, which is in charge of pre-tertiary education frowns on such acts, the service has no statute that bars non-final year students from sitting the exams.
“As far as I know, there is no law in GES that when you are in form 1 or 2, you cannot write BECE. There’s no law. There’s no statue. But then there’s a principle, they (GES) frown on it,” he told host of Breakfast Today.
The NAGRAT Chairman said this in reaction to a letter the GES has written instructing schools’ heads across the country to submit names of JHS 1 and 2 students who absented themselves from school during the period of the exams.
Although the service did not state in the letter the reason for its request, many believe it is an attempt to fish out non-final year students who sat the exams and possibly punish them.
Mr. Akunzebe also suspects the same but warns that the GES may be setting itself up for a legal tussle, which it will eventually lose if it takes any punitive action against the pupils for sitting the exams.
Even though the BECE is solely meant for final-year JHS pupils, he argued that non-final year pupils who sat the exams did no wrong since there is no rule proscribing their actions.
“What they (GES) are doing, if they collect these names and pupils have written and they want to do ABC and there is a litigant, the litigant will go to court because we are a country of rule of law,” he cautioned the service.
For Mr. Akunzebe, pupils regardless of their level at the basic level should be allowed to sit the exams if they are extremely brilliant and of age.
He is, however, advising the GES to enact a statute on the matter if it is convinced that non-final year pupils sitting BECE is unhealthy.
“There’s no law yet they frown upon it. That’s the problem of GES we are talking about. If you think that you frown on this thing and it’s not good, then put in the statutes, everybody will see it clear”.
2023 BECE results: GES fishing out JHS 1 and 2 students who ‘jumped’ class to write
Source; dreamzfmonline.com
