The Member of Parliament for Builsa South constituency, Dr Clement Apaak, has called for stiffer punishments for teachers caught engaging in examination malpractices in the ongoing Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

16 teachers and examination officials have so far been arrested, according to the Head of the Public Relations Unit of WAEC, John Kapi, at various examination centres across the country for offences ranging from assisting candidates with their exams to taking pictures of question papers and posting them on WhatsApp platforms for candidates.

The arrests in places like Jinijini Senior High School examination centre, Nkoranza Senior High School centre, Chemu Senior High School centre, Jachie Pramso examination centre among other places spread across day 3 of the BECE.

Speaking on JoyNews AM Show on the back of arrests made so far, the Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament's Education Committee, Dr Clement Apaak, admonished the Ghana Education Service to punish the offenders to serve as a deterrent for others.

“I expect the Ghana Education Service to identify and sanction those teachers to serve as a deterrent to others because this conduct is reprehensible. It is even a lot more worrying that it is coming from teachers, because if they had done what they ought to do, and many of them do and they have properly prepared their students.

“This will be in the case of schools where the teachers who were apprehended are teachers of that school then they ought not to try to find these unorthodox ways of giving their students a leg up, that is one," he said.

Despite acknowledging the challenges some of the schools and teachers face, Dr Apaak emphasized that such acts and behaviours must not be tolerated in the country's educational system.

“Two, it clearly cannot be acceptable that no matter what the circumstances may be, and I know there are issues. Look let's be honest, there are issues as far as public basic education is concerned and one of them is that these students who are writing the BECE have not seen a textbook based on the new curriculum which came into effect in September 2019.

“At the junior secondary school level, they are supposed to be under the auspices of what we call the common core curriculum for p1- p6 is the standard based curriculum so these students who are writing I have a lot of sympathy for them and I pray that they do well because truly they did not get the full compliment of being prepared. Not because their teachers didn’t want to, and not because their parents didn’t want them to be properly prepared, and not because they didn’t want to, but government failed in making sure that textbooks were produced for them to use so from JHS 1,2, and 3 they are writing BECE they have never seen a textbook,” Dr Apaak lamented.

MAG/AE