Candidates, who could not be registered to write the ongoing Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), will not have the chance to write this year, according to the Ministry of Education (MoE).
According to the Ministry, registration of candidates of the BECE was a process which started long ago so if the heads of schools could not register their candidates, there was nothing the Ministry could to in this instance.
About 34 final year students from the Redemption School Complex in the Awutu Senya West District of the Central Region, who are sitting for the ongoing 2018 BECE, were disappointed after they discovered that the headmaster of the school failed to register them.
The students could not find their index numbers at the examination centre where they were supposed to write their paper on Monday, June 5, 2018.
It was later discovered that the Headmaster, John Afranie Mensah, failed to register the 34 students.
In the Northern Region, 75 pupils of Prince of Peace Junior High School (JHS) were left red-faced after they were turned away from the 2018 BECE after their proprietor failed to register them despite collecting registration fees.
The Northern Regional Police Command commenced investigations into what led to the failure of the Proprietor of the Tamale based Prince of Peace International School, Sulemana Saeed, to register a total of seventy-five candidates for this year’s BECE.
The seventy-five candidates of the school were turned away at Northern School of Business Examination Center after they reported to participate in the ongoing countrywide examination.
The candidates, some of whom expressed shock at the turn of events, alleged that the Proprietor of the school, Sulemana Saeed, 28, took GHS 500.00 from each of the candidates as registration fee only for them to be turned away.
They told Prime News Ghana that "we arrived here at 5am to check our index numbers but we were told they aren't on the available, now we don't know what to tell our parents because we each paid GHS 500.00 for this examination".
Police officers from the Northern Regional Police Command whisked Sulemana away after they sensed danger from the peeved candidates when they immediately began hooting at him when he showed up at the examination center.
Checks by Prime News Ghana revealed that, a total of 151 candidates were supposedly registered by Sulemana Saeed in his private Junior High School to undertake the examination but only seventy six could find their index numbers.
Speaking in an interview with Prime News Ghana on Tuesday June 5, 2018, the Northern Regional Public Affairs Director for the Ministry of Education, Donald Kanzoni said “I cannot assure that the candidates will be able to write the BECE this year, because it started from the registrationâ€.
He said “unfortunately, it may not be possible for the children to write but we shall do our own initiations into the allegationsâ€.