By: Kebba AF Touray
Muhammed BS Jallow, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education told reports yesterday that the resulsts of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination dubbed WASSCE has shown significant improvement.
He went into details to show that the performance this year is better than last year. He said 2,183 candidates or more, have five credits in 2018 compared to 1,656 in 2017.
PS Jallow disclosed this during a press briefing with the media personnel at the Regional Office of MoBSE in Kanifing, with a view to clarify and allay the fears of the public on issues regarding the WASSCE 2018 results.
PS Jallow said out of 2,183 candidates who have 5 credits or more, 1,029 are female and 1,154 are male; that going by Regions, 1,036 candidates come from Region One, 851 from Region Two, 80 from Region Three, 55 from Region Four, 85 from Region Five and 76 from Region Six”.
He cited reports have circulated that only 475 candidates passed the WASSCE 2018 Exams which he clarified, represents the number of candidate with 5 credits including English and Math; that the report interprets everybody outside this number as a failure and excludes 1,629 candidates who have 5 credits or more with a pass in English or Math or both, and giving them access to University.
PS Jallow disclosed improvements in Regional Schools such as Kuntaya and Soma Senior Secondary Schools as examples, where the number of credits in English have increased from 0.0 and 3.8 percent to 8.3 percent and 54.2 percent from 2017 to 2018 respectively, in English; that the number of credits in Mathematics also improved from 1.4 and 41.8 percent in 2017 to 4.2 and 88.6 percent in 2018.
He said the 2016-2030 Education Sector Policy, is premised on The Gambia’s National Development Plan and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all of which he added, are the developing agenda of Government, to improve the human capital of the country by reducing the number of people living below the poverty line.
“To achieve the set goals in this policy, the Ministry is working to achieve quality education. Consequently, special focus is on quality teachers with resources geared towards the continuous professional development of teachers, through In-Service Training,” he said.
