A total of 11,048 Junior High School students, comprising 5,708 boys and 5,340 girls in the Upper West Region, are writing the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) that started on Monday. At the Wa Senior High School where four examination centres were located, there was a 100 per cent turn out for the examination as compared to the previous year when a lot of candidates were absent. At the Wa School for the Blind and Kaleo which hosted two examination centres each, turn out was almost the same except two students who stayed away at one of the centres at Kaleo. Mr Fabian Balieb, Regional Director of Education who conducted Mr Mahmud Khalid, Upper West Regional Minister round some of the centres, expressed worry about the movement of examination papers. He said some districts were far from the examination papers' depot and the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) should allow examination papers meant for a day to be collected at once from the examination papers depot to the centres. "For instance, at the time the Regional Minister and the Education Director got to these centres, students had finished writing English Paper One as at 0945 hours and English Paper Two which was supposed to begin at 1100 hours had not yet arrived", Mr Belieb said. He appealed to the West Africa Examinations Council to allow centres nearer to examination papers depots to be served from the depots irrespective of their political division of districts. This, he said, would avoid delays and frustration among the students who have to wait for long hours before the examination papers arrive at the centres for them to write. Source: GNA