The Upper Manya-Krobo District Directorate of Education, in collaboration with Education Intervention, Ghana, a Non-Governmental Organization, has organized a four-day orientation programme for 800 final year pupils writing the Basic Education Certificate of Examinations(BECE) in the district this year.

The 800 pupils are from both public and private Junior High Schools (JHS) in the district, and the programme was aimed at helping the students to overcome some of the basic mistakes that make them score low marks at the BECE.

In 2013, the Upper Manya-Krobo District was the last but one district on the BECE performance table, and last year the district moved to the last position.

The programme was funded by the Upper Manya-Krobo District Assembly and the Member of Parliament for the area, Mr Jeth Tettey Kavianu.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), the District Chief Executive for Upper Manya-Krobo, Mr Joseph Tettey Angmor, said many of the pupils in the district were from villages where they had not had the opportunity to mix and interact with other students in the area.

Mr Angmor explained that the essence of the exercise was to bring the students together, to interact and be given the opportunity to answer BECE test questions on sample answer sheets, and under similar BECE examination environment.

He hoped the exposure would remove the panic and examination panic to enable the students from the district writing this year’s BECE to perform better than the previous years.

The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Education Directorate, Mr Fred Asante, said the students were taken through the process of answering examination questions, how to shade their answers and their names and index numbers.

He said at the end of the four days, the students were given some test questions to answer in all the subjects they would be examined.

He said when the tests were marked, it was detected that even after the orientation, some pupils made mistakes in writing their index numbers, while others wrote their correct index numbers, but shaded wrongly, with some shading two answers for one question.

Mr Asante said each school was made to bring along a teacher who was to also go through the orientation, to continue to help the students for the remaining one week, before they came back to write the main BECE, which starts from June 15.

When GNA spoke to some of the pupils, Miss Sandra Abetia of Sisiamang Yiti District Assembly JHS, said for the first time in her life, she had the opportunity to answer questions on an answer sheet, which looked exactly like what she would be using during the examination.

She said other answer sheets she had been using in her school were just miniature answer sheets, and that she had also learned how to shade correctly which she hoped, could help her a lot in the examination.

Master Victor Agbenya of Akateng District Assembly JHS, said he had learned to shade correctly.

He said he had also been doing a lot of things which he never knew were unacceptable, but had come to know that those mistakes could cause him a lot, but did not elaborate.