Education think-tank, Africa Education Watch, is urging the government to consider a more value for money approach in the procurement of past questions for final year students in Senior High Schools (SHS).
The Executive Director for Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, said the government must avoid purchasing the past questions yearly since the same past questions can be used for a number of years to teach students about answering WASSCE questions.
Kofi Asare’s comments come on the back of justifications by the Ghana Education Service (GES) for the purchase of the WASSCE past questions.
The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, while addressing the press on Thursday said the procurement of past questions is very necessary despite criticisms from a section of the public.
Kofi Asare, in an interview on Eyewitness News, said while his outfit is not against the procurement of the past questions, the government must adopt an efficient procurement approach.
“Past questions are good if only the education service says it is helping them to do their work. But in procuring same, we must be guided by the efficiency and adopt the most competitive procurement methods so that we can have the best deal,” he said.
“We have never been against past questions. We have had issues with the single-sourced procurement of past questions when it can be competitively done and value for money much more enhanced,” he added.
He suggested that it would be a better idea for the government to limit the procurement of past questions to every three years since the aim is only to help students familiarize themselves with the format of the examination questions.
“We are of the opinion that we don’t need to spend GH¢35 million on past questions, and we don’t need to do this every year, so if we are procuring it competitively, perhaps every three years will be fine,” Kofi Asare noted.