Municipal Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in the Wenchi Municipality of the Bono Region has blamed poor performance of pupils in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) on teacher absenteeism, truancy and government’s flagship programme of Free SHS.

According to the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Wenchi Municipal Directorate of the Ghana Education Service, David Baffoe, the canker of teachers and pupils not being regular in school continues to affect the performance of pupils in the BECE.

He noted that in 2017, the Municipality recorded 68% in the BECE, 67% in 2018 but recorded as low as 25% in 2019.

Mr Baffoe explained in Twi that due to the introduction of the Free SHS policy, pupils do not study because they know that they will be placed in SHS schools no matter the grades they make in the BECE.

He however noted that the Free SHS Policy is a good for promoting education just that the pupils have taken advantage of it to not pull their weight.

To improve the performance, he noted that the Municipality was taking various measures such as punishing absentee teachers and checking truancy on the part of pupils.

“The teachers are the drivers of the curriculum. If things will go well, it depends on them. We are putting in place measures to ensure that absenteeism of teachers is minimized. We had some teachers in some circuits absenting themselves up to 28 days out of the 70 days. Teachers must live up to expectation to be able to improve on the performance of the pupils”, he urged.