Final year pupils of Junior High Schools have started sitting for this year's Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), which took off Monday across the country. Most pupils Joy News spoke to shortly before the examinations begun today, were in high spirits because they had fully prepared towards the examination. Most of the pupils said they were prepared for the examinations, and their teachers confirmed this. A total of 391,079 candidates across the country are expected to take part in this year’s examinations. The candidates who are from 11,778 public and private basic schools are made up of 209,381 males and 181,698 females. They would write the examination at 1,378 centres. The number of candidates for this year, represents an increase of 14,215 over last year’s total of 376,859. The month for writing the examination was changed from April to June to enable final-year Junior High School (JHS) pupils to complete the basic school syllabus before they sit for the papers. The change is in response to complaints by parents, pupils and the public that, JHS pupils often did not complete the full three terms during their final year before they sat for the BECE. Change in the month for writing the BECE is expected to also address the problem of the payment of third term school fees since candidates previously completed school in the second term but were billed for the last term of the academic year. Candidates are expected to write papers including English Language, Social Studies and then end with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on Monday, June 24, 2013. In a goodwill message, the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, urged all candidates to abide by the regulations on the conduct of the examination.