August 31, 2021
By Ilyasa Baa
Recent innovations introduced by the Minster of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Dr. David Moinina Sengeh has saved parents billions of Leones as over 120,000 checked for NPSE result on the day it was released and on Friday when the BECE was released over 26,000 results were checked through the 468 result phone SMS system.
According to the Minister of Information and Communications, Mohamed Rahman Swaray, the money saved with parents who no longer buy scratch cards to check for results, could be used to settle the much talked about bread and butter issue.
Dr. Davif Shenge has said there is vast improvement in terms of passes in the BECE noting that 85.3% pass rate is encouraging. He said there is 87% passes in Integrated Science anf 77% passes in Mathematics unlike last year which was rated 59%. English Language this year is 67% whilst last year it was 53% passes. He attributed this improvement to the continuous training of teachers and the acceptance for the free quality education by parents.
However, private schools are doing much better than government owned schools which since 2016 according to the Ministry’s data, have been scoring higher percentage than the government owned and assisted schools.
Initially, Sierra Leoneans doubted over the free quality education but it is gaining higher levels of acceptance as a result of proactive measures taken by the youthful minister. For the first time BECE results were released before the start of the academic year which means SSS 1 pupils will have the privilege of starting the scholastic year instead of waiting till second term before results were released. Out of the132,000 candidates that took the BECE, the third position was grabbed by Blessing Ngeba of the Rokel village in the Western Rural District.