POOR READING HABIT; MAIN CAUSE OF FAILURE AT B.E.C.E

Poor reading habits of students at the Klave L.A J.H.S in the Ho municipality have been identified as one of the main causes of the abysmal performance at the 2011 Basic Education Certificate examinations.

According to Miss Cynthia Adjololo, a teacher at the school, most students in J.H.S cannot identify the alphabets left alone pronouncing two or letter words.

This came to light at the first School Performance Appraisal meeting (SPAM) organized by the Ho municipal education directorate to engage Stakeholders in identifying the causes of the poor performance of students in the 2011 B.E.C.E and to find ways of reversing the trend at Klave on Tuesday.

Mr. Francis Sedor, the PTA chairman of the school, said since 2008 the school have scored zero percent in the B.E.C.E and blamed the situation on lack of teachers in the school in previous years.

 According to him, not until recently, the primary school have only four teachers teaching pupils from KG to P6 and three teachers handling the junior high school students and this make teaching and learning less effective.

Other problems identified included the inconsistency of students and teachers in the classrooms as some of the students abscond from school to engage in stone quarrying which is a lucrative business in the area.

The meeting which was attended by parents, teachers, school children and opinion leaders from the Klave community as well  as officers from the education directorate, led by the municipal director of education forms part of measures being taken to address the poor performance of students in the municipality.

According to Mr Emmanuel Keteku, Ho Municipal Director of Education, 1720 out of 3233 candidates who wrote the B.E.C.E in the municipality had aggregate 6 to 30. He said the poor performance of the pupils amounted to wasting of government’s limited resources and blamed all stakeholders including parents for being less concerned with their children's education. He therefore urged parents to invest in their children’s education and not to rely solely on government to finance the education of their wards since it is now expensive for government alone to bear.

He also urged opinion leaders to motivate the teachers to give off their best and not to be insulting them.

Other officers from the education directorate also took a swipe at some of the teachers for deserting duties to engage in their personal businesses.

They therefore advised both pupils and teachers to work hard to justify the investments being made in education.

On the way forward, officers from the education directorate will be at Klave in a forth night to undertake a reading clinic for teachers, as the directorate intensifies supervision and monitoring of schools to ensure that teachers are at post and punctual in class.

A task force have also been set up by the community members to ensure school children do not stay at home during school hours and also to ensure punctuality among teachers and students.