By Ndey Sowe / Nelson Manneh
Results of the 2024 Gambia Basic Education Certificate Examination (GABECE) announced on 4 October 2024 by MoBSE have shown an excellent performance by students in private Schools.
According to the 2024 GABECE results, there has been a remarkable increase of students with aggregate 6, when compared to the 2022 and 2023 academic years, with eighty-eight students scoring aggregate 6 in 2024.
Out of the eighty-eight students with aggregate 6, thirty-three (38%) come from public Schools while sixty-five (62%) come from private Schools.
According to MoBSE, the distribution trend of students with aggregate 6 by gender shows that out of the eighty-eight students with aggregate 6, thirty-two of them are males and fifty-six are females, adding that a total of 30,419 candidates registered for the 2024 GABECE exams of which 29,936 candidates were processed and graded, representing a total of 98.4%. The remaining 483 candidates’ marks are currently outstanding due to missing CASS marks or unresolved TASS marks.
“Twelve candidates’ results are withheld by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) office in Banjul,” MoBSE reported; adding that nationally, out of 29,936 students’ results processed, 29,324 students sat at least one subject, and among the number of students who sat for the exams, 59.4% were girls.
MoBSE further reports that candidates with aggregate 42 or higher by region over the last three years, has increased in all the regions, and this number rose from 13,626 in 2023, to 14,761 in 2024.
The MoBSE report also indicated that the number of candidates with aggregate 42 or less has consistently increased for girls from 2022 to 2024, adding that there are more girls than boys with an aggregate score of 42 or less over the last three years, and that candidates with aggregate 42 or less have increased in 2024 by 0.6%.
“The number of candidates with pass marks or credit in the four core subjects has increased in 2024, when compared to 2023. A similar pattern is observed in the volume of students with credit marks in the core subjects,” MoBSE indicates.
After analyzing the 2024 GABECA results, Louise Moses Mendy, Permanent Secretary at MoBSE said teachers in both public and private Schools are all trained at the Gambia College but said the private Schools have outperformed public Schools in the 2024 exams.
“The big question is why is it that the private Schools are performing better than the public Schools?” Mr. Mendy asked.
PS Mendy said his Ministry will take this as a concern and said it will be in their interest to know some of the reasons why the performance of public Schools defer when teachers in both Schools are trained by the same institution.
PS Mendy said MoBSE will look into those private Schools that are performing well for motivation, adding that they will invite proprietors of private schools for a meeting in order to learn from them.
According to Mr. Mendy, Region 5 North is the most challenging region in terms of all the variables from even the results of the recent census.
“The Ministry will move more of its investment to Region Five North because we have realised that this region is the most challenging in terms of educational performance,” he said.
He said there are a couple of public Schools that are also doing well, adding that they will look into those Schools in terms of their leadership and management, to know what the other public Schools are not doing, to improve and perform better.
Meanwhile, he emphasized that there is a need to invest more in this issue to be able to find out the underlying cause of these challenges.
