Africa Education Watch, an education think tank, is asking the government to adopt a better value-for-money strategy in the purchase of past questions for senior high school (SHS) pupils.
According to Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, the government should avoid buying past questions annually since the same past questions may be utilized for a number of years to educate pupils how to answer WASSCE questions.
Kofi Asare’s remarks follow the Ghana Education Service‘s (GES) reasons for purchasing WASSCE past questions.
Despite criticism from certain members of the public, the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, said to the press on Thursday that the acquisition of past questions is critical.
In an interview with Eyewitness News, Kofi Asare said that although his organization is not opposed to the procurement of past questions, the government must follow an effective procurement method.
“Past questions are good if only the education service says it is helping them to do their work. But in procuring same, we must be guided by the efficiency and adopt the most competitive procurement methods so that we can have the best deal,” he said.
“We have never been against past questions. We have had issues with the single-sourced procurement of past questions when it can be competitively done and value for money much more enhanced,” he added.
He recommended that the government restrict the purchase of past questions to every three years since the goal is simply to acquaint pupils with the structure of the test questions.
“We are of the opinion that we don’t need to spend GH¢35 million on past questions, and we don’t need to do this every year, so if we are procuring it competitively, perhaps every three years will be fine,” Kofi Asare noted.
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