''Leakage-free'' BECE Is Pure Luck-Prof. Dzidonu

Education experts in the country have waded into the controversies surrounding the use of digital system in marking examination papers. The experts say it will be very difficult to develop a software flexible enough to mark papers especially essay scripts.

This comes on the back of some recommendations made by the committee set up to investigate the recent exam leakages in the WASSCE for the West African Examination Council (WAEC) to check exam malpractices using technology, even to the extent of marking their scripts.

Among the recommendations are the Annual rotation and award systems for center invigilators, stricter measures and the use of advanced technology to curb exam malpractices.

These measures were necessitated by the recurrent leakages of examination papers and the cancellation of five papers in the 2015 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) after the Examination Council detected the seepage of the papers on social media.

Speaking to Univers news, President of the Accra Institute of Technology (AIT), Professor Clement Dzidonu proposed the use of technology to eliminate the use of question papers. He opined that the seepage of exams papers are as a result of the long period between when examiners set the questions and the day the papers are written.

“We cannot solve the leakage problem unless we eliminate this numerous stages and the lot of people handling this paper at various stages” he said.

Professor Dzidonu further said the digital marking cannot deal with poor invigilation that would allow students copy during an examination. He also described the leakage-free 2016 BECE as pure luck. According to him the examination body has not put enough measures in place to nip the problem in the bud.

In a related development, Counseling Psychologist at the University of Ghana, Dr. Annabella Osei-Tutu also lauded the use of digital marking to grade multiple choice questions but was unsure of any sophisticated software that can mark essay question.

“When we are marking essays; we have our marking scheme. In the case your clever student has answered the question in a way that it goes beyond your marking scheme; that is where your flexibility will come in. There may be certain things you may not even have captured but your bright student has incorporated that into his or her essay and so if it is not in your simple marking scheme and you fed it into the machine, how do you compensate your bright student?” Dr. Osei-Tutu clarified

She has however appealed to teachers to encourage their students learn beyond what they teach them in class.

Meanwhile the Ghana Education Service (GES) has said they must be congratulated for the leakage-free 2016 BECE. This appears not to have gone down well with many Ghanaians describing it as needless and baseless.

By: Emmanuel Dzivenu/ Radio Univers 105.7 MHz