A recent report by the Cape Coast Metro Education Directorate has revealed that only 52.31 percent of pupils in public schools within the Cape Coast Metro Directorate passed the 2020 BECE, as against 82.56% of pupils in the private school sector within the metropolis.
The report, also revealed that poor attitude of pupils towards learning, pupils’ poor approach to answering questions, fear and anxiety during exams on the part of candidates and some teachers’ difficulty in handling some presumed difficult topics like geography in the classroom led to pupils failing in the 2020 BECE.
It is on this backdrop that the Cape Coast Metro Directorate has organized a two-week training workshop for subject teachers in the Cape coast Metropolis to improve upon their teaching strategies.
Speaking with ATL FM News on the sidelines of the workshop, the Cape Coast Metro Director of Education, Dorcas Brenda Opare said pupils in the various schools are not able to answer basic questions during the examination period due to how teachers teach some topics in the classroom.
According to her, although some of the schools are not having the required textbooks to teach, teachers must do research to complement their teaching efforts in the classroom.
Mad. Brenda Opare said the training workshop was an in-service training to equip the teachers holistically.
“We realized that the performance in the core subject areas such as Mathematics, English, Social Studies and Science were very poor and so through that engagement that we had with them, we decided it was necessary to give in-service training to teachers who teach these subjects so that whatever might be the challenges could be rectified. Our goal is to ensure that the children answer the questions well and pass well.”
She emphasized that it is unacceptable for the metropolis to have a record of 61.7% and as such efforts must be made to cross the 75% mark if need be.
The workshop she explained will be done on a yearly basis to give the teachers an edge in tackling issues in the classroom. This she explained its necessary due to the dynamism in the education sector.
On his part, Rev. Dr. David Quampah a facilitator for the workshop indicated that the best approach to be adopted to bring a change to the performance of pupils at the BECE is to bring all teachers and pupils together to afford them the opportunity to throw light on the challenges they face as teachers and pupils.
He said the teacher must place emphasis on rubrics for the students to get familiarized with the subjects before undertaking any examination.
Source: ANTHONY SASU AYISADU/ATLFMNEWS
