Africa Education Watch (EduWatch) is urging stakeholders to look beyond students when assessing the poor performance recorded in the latest West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

The Executive Director of EduWatch, Kofi Asare, says failures should also trigger questions about the effectiveness of Ghana’s education system.

His comments follow the release of the latest WASSCE results, which showed significant challenges in candidates' performance in some core subjects.

The results have renewed debate over the grading system and whether it contributes to the number of students who fail or are unable to secure placement.

But Mr Asare says the focus should not be placed solely on the grading system.

He explained that the use of the Stanine grading system means a proportion of candidates will always fall at the lower end of the performance curve.

“Obviously, since you have stanine, you always have a certain number scoring 4% I mean, scoring nine. And so the stanine norm, 4% are likely to get nine.”

He said differences in performance across subjects can also affect the overall number of high-performing candidates.

“And so if you have 4% getting nine in maths, and that 4% are not the same as those getting nine in English, then you’re likely to have 8% statistically.”

According to him, this could still translate into a significant number of candidates when applied to the total WASSCE cohort.

“So then you’re still getting close to 50k from this number; we are talking about 619k.”

He stressed that some candidates will naturally fall at the lower end of the curve under the grading system.

“So, it’s expected that those at the lower end of the bell curve will always not meet that mark.”

However, Mr Asare cautioned against making the grading system the central explanation for the latest results.

“But I don’t want us to overly concentrate on the grading system as the cause because I think that conversations should rather be on about how to improve performance.”

He said Ghana must focus on ensuring that students do not spend years in the education system only to leave basic school without meeting the required standards.

“Ensuring that no one goes through basic school for 9 years, excluding KG, so 11 years, and then fail ever.”

He questioned why a student should spend such a long period in basic education and still be classified as a failure.

“I mean we should ask ourselves that question: Why should someone go through basic education for 11 years and come out with what we call a fail?”

Mr Asare said such failures should not be attributed to students alone.

“That fail is not the student’s alone failing. It’s all of us failing, including the government, the teachers, the GES, the parents, us stakeholders, and also the students.”

He therefore called for a broader assessment of the education system to identify the factors contributing to poor performance.

“So those questions normally should be asked broadly so that we are able to get a necessary system-wide response, you know, to improve on the performance of those we shepherd through school from Kindergarten 1 all the way to Junior High School 3.”