By Nicholas Bass
Mr. Karamo S. Bojang, a retired educationist and former Principal of Nusrat Senior Secondary School in his evaluation of the 2022 West African Senior Secondary Schools examination results emphasized that students of the 21st century have been turned upside down by social media which has contributed greatly to the recent poor WASSCE performance.
Speaking to this medium, the retired educationist, Mr. Bojang noted that the Ministry of Education’s main role is to provide teachers and salaries for their staff in schools who should teach and give guidelines to candidates for WASSCE.
He pointed out that the main role of the West African Examination Council is to assess candidates on subjects taught by teachers and to analyze candidates’ performances which will serve as a guide for the Ministry of Education to mitigate poor performance in the Gambia.
“When WASSCE results are good, many people tend to praise the permanent secretary, school principals, and candidates without remembering the efforts of their parents who are one of the important stakeholders in the educational sector. Gambian students have developed the habit of cheating during WASSCE and they do not believe in hard work, instead, they believe that social media will make them excel in WASSCE. This has turned our educational system upside down’’, he lamented.
Mr. Bojang further revealed that “most of the candidates highly depend on social media to copy questions and answers during the WASSCE exam and they believed that those questions and answers are real questions from WASSCE.
“Some candidates take the extra mile of paying money for their registration on WhatsApp platforms purposely for examination malpractices and they procrastinate their time during WASSCE to smuggle answers into the examination halls”, Mr. Bojang exclaimed.
He went on to state that he fought against examination malpractice during his tenure in Nusrat Senior Secondary School by compelling victims of examination malpractice to repeat a particular grade or class.
“Examination malpractice is becoming a phenomenon in the Gambia which is gradually developing to be part of a habit of our candidates in schools coupled with the pride of school principals in getting nine credits which have made many to wallow into examination malpractice, especially during WASSCE. The propagation of the educational system does not match our resources which demands a price for the Ministry of Education to consider before propagating more schools for access to education for all without a proper evaluation of quality education’’, retired educationist Bojang highlighted.
He appealed for more emphasis to be placed on mathematics, physics, and chemistry to propel the youths into science and technology, instead of putting more emphasis on the English language which might discourage the youths from venturing into science and technology at the university.
“If the Gambia has fewer students in the area of mathematics, chemistry, and physics it will triple down our development in science and technology,” he noted.
