The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has announced that the marking of this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) scripts will begin on Monday, October 9.
The coordination procedure, which includes gathering the markers to familiarise themselves with the current marking scheme, was started by WAEC last Wednesday.
“They will finish the coordination on Friday (today), and by Monday, October 9, the actual marking will start,” said John Kapi, Head of Public Affairs at WAEC, in a statement to the Daily Graphic yesterday.
He claimed that the release of funds posed a problem for the marking of the scripts, which was a component of the examination’s second procedure.
“So we have started the process, but what we are saying is that if monies are not released, we may not be able to complete it,” he said.
There have been some concerns regarding the delay in the marking of this year’s test papers, but Mr. Kapi reported that WAEC met last Monday with the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, who assured the council that he would release some monies.
He emphasised that nobody was on strike for the script marking.
There were worries that the 2023 BECE for school and private candidates wouldn’t be held as a result of the government’s debt to WAEC.
The West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the BECE were, however, conducted by the WAEC with the help of GH50.5 million that were eventually released by the government.
A total of GH 40 million from this sum, or roughly 30% of the total required for the exam’s conduct, went towards the WASSCE’s successful conduct.
Wendy Addy-Lamptey, the Head of the National Office of WAEC, who made the announcement, highlighted that GH10.5 million was allocated for the successful conduct of the BECE, or around 15% of the necessary funds.
Statistics
The 2023 BECE was administered to 602,457 junior high school (JHS) seniors nationwide from August 7 to August 11, concurrently for school and private candidates.
The number represented an increase of 49,049 over last year’s figure of 553,408.
Out of the total, 600,714 were School Candidates (BECE-SC), while 1,743 sat the BECE as Private Candidates (BECE-PC).
The BECE-SC were made up of 300,323 males and 300,391 females, while the BECE-PC involved 889 males and 854 females.
Regional breakdown
For the BECE-SC, Ashanti Region had the highest number of 117,084 candidates, made up of 57,973 males and 59,111 females.
It was followed by the Greater Accra Region with 112,894 candidates — 54,624 males and 58,270 females.
The Central Region had 68,035 candidates — 34,166 males and 33,869 females — with Western and Western North regions presenting 60,528 candidates (30,825 males and 29,703 females).
About 58,311 candidates, made up of 29,703 males and 28,608 females, sat the examination in the Eastern Region, while 55,617 candidates (27,882 males and 27,735 females) took part in the examination in the Ahafo, Bono and Bono East regions.
The Northern, North East and Savannah regions were to present a total of 46,783 candidates — 24,706 males and 22,077 females.
The Volta and Oti regions also had 44,221 candidates (22,723 males and 21,498 females), while Upper East Region featured 22,437 candidates (10,558 males and 11,879 females), with the Upper West Region recording 14,804 candidates (7,163 males and 7,641 females).
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