The Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam District Education Directorate has urged candidates in this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) to attach more seriousness to enable them to make progress in their educational pursuits. Nana Kojo Abesse Assan, the District Examination Coordinator, allaying the fears of the students, maintained that BECE was akin to the regular terminal exams and that it was easy to pass with a little more effort. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), he advised: “You need to sit down and learn so that you can make good grades to enter Senior High School. “Learning is not only about reading but you have to put what you read into practice by writing and solving past questions. If you don’t write often, even your handwriting can fail you.” A total of 2,911 candidates from 112 public and private schools in the district are expected to sit for the exams in nine centers from Monday, October 17 to Friday, October 21. The figure is 148 more than that of last year. Nana Assan admonished the candidates to eschew all forms of fear and stay calm to write their final year papers, assuring that intimidation from invigilators would not be tolerated. He said they would be given the opportunity to work peacefully and independently, adding that police personnel would be deployed to protect them and ensure calm. “No invigilator has the right to bully any student. They do not have the right to stand beside one student for more than two minutes. Their duty is to comb through the exams hall to ensure a free and fair examination and make the students comfortable,” he said. Nonetheless, he said they had put adequate measures in place to mitigate the incidence of examination malpractice which he described as a canker. “Last week, we spent about two hours on the radio to address some of the issues relating to the exams, and from the phone-in session we had with the students, it is clear that they had understood the repercussions associated with cheating,” he added. The examination coordinator told the GNA that the district had made full preparations for the exams, adding that the situation of inadequate furniture which was a major challenge in the past had been resolved. Judging from the mocks written so far, Nana Assan was optimistic that the final-year students would pass the BECE with a record pass percentage. “In 2021, we recorded a 72.06 percent pass and that was an improvement over the 2020 results. This year, we are hopeful that the results will be better than what we saw last year,” he said.