The Central Regional director of the Ghana Education Service, Mrs. Rosemond Blay has appealed to students to learn hard to avoid examination malpractices. She said if students took their studies seriously and learn hard, they would be preparing themselves adequately to write and pass examinations to avoid examination malpractices or cheating. Mrs. Blay said this in speech read for her at the fifth speech and prize-giving day of the Odoben Senior High School at Odoben in the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa district of the Central Region on Saturday. She said, "Examination malpractice is a despicable vice which needed to be uprooted completely from our society". The Regional director said if such a vice persists in the society, the nation will gradually lose its intellectually confident, honest and hardworking labour force and will lay hands on an intellectually bankrupt, dishonest and fraudulent workforce. Mrs. Blay appealed to students to be disciplined and make good use of their time to study in order to excel in their examinations and their chosen careers. She advised them against peer pressure, all forms of indolence and lackadaisical attitude towards studies because it makes students prone to undertaking acts leading to examination malpractice. The headmaster of the School, Mr. Albert Ayimful Kwasi Saeed, in his annual report said academic performance of the school has been fairly good. He said out of 151 candidates presented last year for the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), 9 passed in all eight subjects, 17 passed in 7 subjects and 24 passed in 6 subjects. Mr. Saeed continued that 38 passed in 5 subjects, 17 in 4 subjects, 18 passed in 3 subjects, 17 passed in 2 subjects, 7 in 1 subject and four failed outright, adding that the school’s best aggregate was 9, an improvement over the its previous aggregate of 10. He said the population of the school continued to increase annually and called for expansion of facilities to commensurate with increasing number of its intake. Dr. Sakyi Appiah, Agona district Director of Health Services who chaired the function appealed to tutors and staff of the school to work hard to improve academic performance of students despite problems facing them. He urged the students to be self-disciplined and ensure they did not waste time on vices such as drug abuse, sexual immorality, occultism and negative relationships, which would divert their attention from their main purpose of being at school. Source: GNA