I CRITICISED the publication of a so-called league table of the 2003 Senior Secondary School Certificate (SSSCE) by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and the Ghana Education Service.
When the 2004 results were published this year, I again criticized the exercise.
Recently, Mr. S.E. Amissah, formerly of the Ghana Education Service, also criticized the publication on the grounds that the results should have weighted a truer reflection of the performance of the candidates.
At the 95th Speech and Prize-Giving Day of Adisadel College, the Acting Headmaster, Mr. Kwadwo Asiedu-Gyimah, had some harsh words for the joint GES-MOE publication (Daily Guide, Monday March 21, 2005).
According to the newspaper’s account, Mr. Asiedu-Gyimah felt that “ a mere pass by a student is not enough guarantee that he or she will gain admission into a university.”
Mr. Asiedu-Gyimah reportedly added, “The league system of grading schools according to their performance in the SSSCE gives a false impression of superiority to certain schools, while other schools also acquire a certain false sense of inferiority, just because the system is not qualitative enough.”
Whether the Director-General or anybody in the GES and the Ministry of Education read the concerns expressed by people or not is difficult to say.
It is clear, however, that the remarks by Mr. K.J. Baku, head of the research department of the West African Examination Council (WAEC), must have stung the Director-General, Mr. Michael Nsowah, to the quick.
In its Saturday, April 2, 2005 issue, the Daily Graphic reported Mr. Baku as stating that the league table was “an unrealistic exercise that gives the wrong impression about the true performance level of the schools.”
According to the Daily Graphic, “He (Mr. Baku) said that although the exercise was well-intentioned, it would rather bring about unfair comparison of efforts of teachers, false confidence or false accusations of school authorities and serve as a basis for examination malpractices.”
The Graphic report went on, “In an illustration to buttress his argument, he said the present table would place a student who had five “E’s” and one failure on top of one who had five “A’s” and two failures and wondered whether this was a fair representation of their performance.”
“This is a wrong statistical approach,” Mr. Baku reportedly said.
In reaction to the observations by Mr. Baku, the Director-General, Mr. Nsowah, is reported to have said in an interview that “the league table published by the service (Ghana Education Service) has helped to identify the non-performing schools and enabled the service to put in measures to assist them.” (Daily Graphic-Wednesday, April 6, 2005).
The Graphic further reports Mr. Nsowah as saying that, “the essence of the table was to bring out the way each school was performing so that measures could be taken to address their concerns.”
It is reassuring to note that, as a result of the publication of the league table, the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education and Sports have been able to take measures to help the so-called non-performing schools.
The question to ask is: why did the Ghana Education Service find it necessary to publish a league table? Could the officials not have been able to digest the information without going public, especially when the basis for the publication is so flawed as to make it virtually useless as far as making comparisons are concerned?
I repeat that the officials did not have to publish a so-called league table before coming to the conclusion that, for example, Piina Senior Secondary School needed help.
All they needed to do was to check the results of that school to realize that help was needed there, as in countless other schools.
In any case, does it mean that the schools that went way up the league ladder did not need help? Is there a Government-assisted senior secondary school that is so self-sufficient that it could do without help of any kind from anywhere?
The Graphic quotes Mr. Nsowah as saying, “It is fascinating and fulfilling to be rated among the top rank of second cycle schools in the country.”
Yet, just before this observation, Mr. Nsowah had been quoted by the same paper as saying, “I wonder why people are making fetish of the positions on the league table.” Is there not an obvious contradiction here?
The fact of the matter is that, when the GES and the Ministry of Education first published the league table for the 2003 examinations in 2004, many people, including normally intelligent and reasonable well-educated ones, were deceived into making a fetish of the rankings, which Mr. Nsowah finds “fascinating and fulfilling.”
The Daily Graphic did not just put the story on the front page, it was the lead news with this screaming headline; WESLEY GIRLS TOPS ALL.
There were strange and ludicrous noises by certain elements to the effect that so-called Catholic discipline had been the factor that had placed many of the Catholic-founded schools among the top twenty.
That was even used to canvass the idea of Government returning to the Missions the schools founded by them.
Some past students of so-called prestigious schools reportedly descended on headmasters to demand an explanation for the alleged poor performance.
As observed by Mr. Baku and Mr. Asiedu-Gyimah, the publication tended to reinforce or induce perceptions of superiority or inferiority, as the case might be.
The GES and the Ministry of Education must have been taken in by the surface picture presented by the so-called league table.
As I pointed out in my article on the 2004 league table, Diaso Secondary School in the Central Region was supposed to have performed better than Prempeh College in the Ashanti Region.
Whereas Diaso scored one hundred percent pass, Prempeh College scored 98.90 percent. Whereas Diaso moved from its 307th position in 2003 to share the first position with Wesley Girls High School, Notre Dame Seminary Secondary School, Kukuom Secondary School and Sefwi Bekwai Secondary, Prempeh College remained in its previous 15th position.
Going beneath the surface, you discover that Diaso presented 52 candidates, out of which 47 had passes in seven subjects and five in six subjects.
Prempeh College, on the other hand, presented the highest number of candidates, 813. Of that number, 709 candidates had passes in all eight subjects, 76 had seven passes, 19 passed in six subjects, 6 passed in five subjects, one candidate passed in four subjects, one passed in three subjects, and one passed in one subject.
Wesley Girls presented 381 candidates and 374 of them had passes in eight subjects, while Prempeh had 709 candidates, passing in eight subjects.
Is Wesley Girls a better school than Prempeh or is Prempeh better than Wesley Girls? What is the basis for the comparison?
Again, this league table tells us nothing about the quality of the grades obtained. How many “A’s”, how many “B’s”, and so on?
Yet another unanswered question has to do with the grades obtained by candidates at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) which gained them admission to the various senior secondary schools.
What was the average grade of candidates who were admitted to Piina Senior Secondary School and what was the average for those who were admitted to Prempeh or Wesley Girls?
What about the quantity or quality of staff available?
What of equipment, materials, even the environment? What is the residential status of these schools, day or boarding?
Mr. Baku raised the possibility of examination malpractices occasioned by the publication of this so-called league. We should not dismiss his fears as some schools may strive to wipe away the public ridicule. Do not also leave out the possibility of even so-called top schools indulging in such malpractices to maintain a reputation they may deserve or do not deserve.
If the Ministry of Education and Sports and the Ghana Education Service want to know what the problem of the individual schools are, they already have a way of getting the information since every year, the schools present statistics to the two bodies.
The useless exercise should stop.
