Accra, April 18, GNA - Mr Michael Nsowah, Acting Director General of the Ghana Education Service on Monday intervened to allow a candidate who was nearly disqualified from writing this year's Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

Miss Augustina Danquah, an 18 year-old student of Lollards Junior Secondary School (JSS) could not meet the prerequisite formalities, since her name was not on the attendance sheet.

Mr Nsowah, who was on inspection tour of some of the Examination Centres and met the scene at the St Stephen's JSS at Darkuman in Accra asked that Miss Danquah's case should be treated "as an irregular one" and be allowed to write the examination.

Mr John Asiedu, Proprietor of the Lollards JSS, a private school at Darkuman-Alafia explained that by October last year when the registration was being done the girl owed 280,000 cedis in school fees so when she paid 50,000 cedis for the registration fee he used it to defray part of her school fees.

Miss Elizabeth Tetteh, the girl's mother said, while her daughter was writing the examination she had paid 80,000 cedis as part of the school fees at the beginning of the term and she later paid the 50,000 cedis for the examination fee and just last two weeks she paid another 150,000 cedis as part of the school fees. Out of five examination centres Mr Nsowah visited, a total of 22 students did not turn up and it was explained that five had travelled outside the country while the whereabouts of the rest were not known.

A total of 287,341 candidates comprising 158,038 boys and 129,303 girls have registered for the BECE, which started nationwide in 1084 centres on Monday.

The candidates wrote English Language and Religious and Moral Education as their maiden papers. They are writing nine papers with French as an optional one.

All the supervisors and invigilators said they have not countered any problems so far. 18 April 05