By: Ilyasa Baa
Ministers of Education in the five countries where the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) operates have met and signed a communique to upgrade and harmonize the operations of the Council.
The Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Dr. David Moinina Sengeh described the meeting as a mile stone achievement towards public exams. He said WAEC needed to be updated noting that the Government’s syllabuses were quite different from the Council’s syllabuses from which questions were drawn for the pupils in Sierra Leone.
The communiqué, he informed, deals with how to eliminate exam malpractices in the NPSE, BECE and WASSCE and harmonize the syllabuses for those taking these public exams. “The Ministers have committed that their countries would pay their dues on time so that WAEC operates without crying for funds”, he said, adding that with the new reforms, the issue of exam malpractice will be a thing of the past completely.
He said there is need for critical thinking and creativity to be part of the syllabus so that pupils in Sierra Leone will be in the position to compete globally. He said the fact that President Bio is part and parcel of the High Level Steering Committee in Education and him being the Chairman of the Global Monitoring Report on Education, means the country has benefited a lot and stands to benefit more internationally in the coming years.
In another development, Dr. Sengeh has described the Bo stadium incidence as an accident noting that there was a well-coordinated response with one of the vehicles of the Presidential convoy being used to rush girls to the hospital.
Meanwhile, twenty of the girls who went to the stadium to collect their routine supply of sanitary pads from the First Lady are still admitted in Bo and Freetown government hospital and are in stable condition.