A child’s rights activist, Bright Appiah, has asked the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to allow the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates in Bunkpurugu, who were not able to sit for their first two papers, to do so at a more immediate time.

Over 200 BECE candidates from two communities in the District were not able to sit for the English and Religious and Moral Education papers taken on Monday because there was a change in their examination centres.

WAEC subsequently indicated that such candidates would have to defer and re-sit these papers in February 2018.

But the activist has argued that the problem was no fault of the candidates, adding that “in all matters, the law provides that we look for the best interest of children… WAEC is no exception to that.”

“Once you are bringing services to children and once the state has declared something to be free and compulsory to children then nothing else should inhibit the process in terms of how children will access it.”

“There is nowhere in the law that children should write the exams within a week. There are rules and regulations that state how examinations need to be conducted and since this is an issue which is not their doing, I think that WAEC should be flexible enough to give these children the opportunity,” he told Accra-based Citi FM.

But WAEC has insisted that the way the examinations are conducted and the complexities involved would not make it possible for it to reschedule an immediate sitting for the two papers for the students.