WASSCE results best in 8 years – President
The 2022 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results are Ghana’s best in the last eight years, the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has observed.
“Indeed, the free senior high school (SHS) era has seen systematic improvement over the pre-free SHS era,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo shared his observation at the 70th anniversary of the Opoku Ware SHS (OWASS) in Kumasi last Saturday, stressing the 2022 WASSCE results of those students, which he preferred to call the ‘Akufo-Addo Graduates’, were splendid.
“I can state, without equivocation, that I am proud of the policy and of its results thus far,” he said.
WASSCE statistics
Performance statistics for the core subjects over the three years of the free SHS, as released by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), show that in 2020, when the first batch of the free SHS beneficiaries wrote the WASSCE, 57.34 per cent passed in English, 65.71 per cent passed in Core Mathematics, while 52.53 and 64.31 per cent passed in Integrated Science and Social Studies, respectively.
In 2021, 54.08 passed in English, Core Mathematics recorded 54.11 per cent passes, with 65.70 per cent passing in Integrated Science and 66.03 per cent in Social Studies.
The President, happy with the data, further broke it down, saying: “This year, 61.39 per cent recorded A1 to C6 in Mathematics, compared to 33.12 per cent in 2016; 71.5 per cent recorded A1 to C6 in Social Studies, compared to 54.5 per cent in 2016; 62.45 per cent recorded A1-C6 in Integrated Science, compared to 48.35 per cent in 2016, while 60.39 per cent had A1 to C6 in English, compared to 51.6 per cent in 2016.”
Event
The 70th anniversary, which was on the theme: “Seven decades of leadership through self-discipline”, attracted many dignitaries, including the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II; the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum; the Juabenhene, Nana Otuo Siriboe II, who is an old boy of the school, as well as a host of the old boys, known as Akatakyie.
It was chaired by Justice Stephen Alan Brobbey, a former Supreme Court Justice and an alumnus of OWASS.
Guaranteeing the nation’s future
While admitting that there were still some bottlenecks associated with implementing the free SHS policy, President Akufo-Addo said six years on, the policy had guaranteed a minimum of SHS education for 1.3 million Ghanaian children — the highest such enrolment in Ghana’s history.
He noted that history and the experience of developed nations had shown that the most efficient way to create a society of opportunities and thereby guarantee the future of the nation.