Government to Introduce National Standardised Test for BECE Students

The Ministry of Education, led by Haruna Iddrisu, has announced plans to introduce a National Standardised Test (NST) for final-year Junior High School students before they sit for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

This initiative, as revealed during a recent public forum, is intended to better prepare students for the BECE and other national examinations.

The Education Minister explained that the NST aims to mentally and academically ready students for the rigors of the BECE.

The test will be administered to students in Class 2, Class 4, Class 6, and JHS 2 to familiarize them with the examination environment.

“I am happy to announce that the NST will be introduced in Ghana for P2, P4, P6, and JSS2,” said Iddrisu. “The intention is simple – we want to prepare children for the world of examinations. It’s not enough to only have them sit for the BECE without prior experience of an examination room.”

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In a contrasting perspective, the former Public Relations Officer for the Ministry of Education, Kwasi Kwarteng, has criticized the portrayal of the NST as a new initiative by the current government.

He highlighted that the NST was initially implemented in 2021 under the Akufo-Addo administration, with three nationwide assessments conducted so far.

“On December 17, 2021, the first NST was administered to Primary 4 students, with 470,768 pupils from 15,391 schools participating,” Kwarteng stated in a Facebook post.

“Subsequently, over 1.5 million pupils from Primary 4 and Primary 2 were assessed in 2022, and in July 2024, the test was conducted for 895,685 students at both Primary 4 and Primary 6 levels.”

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Kwarteng emphasized that any attempt to present the NST as a new initiative is misleading. He stressed that governance is a continuous process, and acknowledging the history of policies is crucial to giving credit where it is due.