Once again the annual Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) is going on across the country.
It smoothly started nationwide yesterday with a total of 602, 457 final-year junior high school (JHS) students and private candidates (PCs).
The 602,457 include an increase of 49,049 over last year's figure of 553,408.
The school candidates comprise 300,323 males and 300,391 females, making a total of 600,714, while the PCs are 889 males and 854 females, totaling 1,743.
The examination being written at more than 2,000 centres started with Religious and Moral Education and English Language and will end on Friday with French.
We congratulate the candidates on going through basic education to gain the opportunity to write the BECE, which is a requirement for second-cycle education in the country.
Though not a requirement for apprenticeship currently, going through basic education helps school leavers to have some edge in apprenticeship.
A good BECE aggregate is also an assurance that even if one misses the chance to further one's education now, one can do so in future with all the terms and conditions applying.
Some school leavers also can use it as a qualification for certain jobs.
All these prove the importance of the BECE, which should be known by the prospective basic school leavers.
However, they should be reminded daily of this during this week as they write the examination so that they will not get involved in malpractices that can deny them the certificate to earn from the BECE.
This should be the duty of parents, guardians, school authorities and invigilators.
We once again congratulate the candidates on the fact that so far, nothing untoward has happened, hoping that this year would mark the beginning of a BECE history in which no negative incidents like leak of questions and carrying of foreign material to the examination centre occurred.
At the time of going to press, we had not heard any challenges like some centres not starting the examination on time because the examination materials did not arrive there early.
We hope that trend would prevail till the end of the examination on Friday. The whole nation should pray for a successful BECE because that success, as usual, is an assurance that the country has people to train to take up the mantle of developing the country.
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There are two important issues school authorities and parents in particular and the country as a whole must stem.
School authorities should be alert to any vandalism likely to be perpetrated by certain basic school leavers on now their former schools for one reason or another.
Oftentimes, it is senior high school leavers who do this but with the years going by, JHS leavers too can be influenced, so school authorities should be on the lookout and be proactive.
The second issue relates to all manner of entertainment programmes.
Some people have made it a commercial venture to organise entertainment programmes for basic school leavers and some of them turn sour such as certain children getting involved in violence.
Such violence can result in injuries that can affect their health and probably jeopardise their future, so parents and guardians must guide their children and wards.
Once again, we congratulate the BECE candidates and pray that they will come out with flying colours.
