Executive director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare has urged the West African Examination Council, WAEC to move away from the recall assessment method in assessing students in senior high schools.
He was speaking in an exclusive interview with Univers News on 9th March, 2023 at the Ghana Compact Technical Consultations on Education and Youth Employment and Empowerment event held at Holiday Inn, Accra.
Kofi Asare emphasized on the need to revise the methods used in teaching and assessing students, further suggesting the use of what he termed, ‘applied assessment method’.
“We have been operating under an assessment method that is based on recall since independence. Because the assessment is based on recall, teachers teach students to recall and of course, that is supported by the existing curriculum in our schools at both basic and secondary levels. It is important for us to reconsider the way we teach and by extension, the way we assess our students. One way is to get WAEC to move from over-relying on questions that require recall answers like the objective questions and the “what is” kind of questions, move from that and pay attention to assessment methods that are aimed at testing how the student applies what they have learnt, what I call applied assessment method,” he said.
Kofi Asare went on to further suggest that teachers in basic schools should pay attention to the strengths and interests of their students from primary 1 up to JHS 2 before their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) would be placed in a school that is relevant to their interest as they move further in their academic journey.
“Teachers, as they teach students from primary school to junior high school should have an extra responsibility of reporting identified strengths of students. The strengths may not be academic so if a student is not good academically and has an interest in arts, catering, construction or any form of science, teachers identify that and report them so by the time the student gets to JHS 2, their continuous assessment based on subjects that are undertaken should have a component of extra-curriculum or this personal observation continuous assessment. That is what should inform where the state should place the student when it comes to free senior high school.”
Ghana Compact Technical Consultations on Education, Youth Employment and Empowerment is an event that was held to gather great minds to be able to come out with substantial solutions to problems in the education sector.