Jessica Quaye and Two Other Former Wesley Girls’ Students Sweep WAEC awards

For the fourth time running, Ghana has swept all the three topmost awards of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Excellence Award instituted by the council.

All the three awardees and the Overall Best in the Business programme are former students of Wesley Girls’ Senior High School in the Central Region.

They are Ms Jessica Ayeley Quaye, Ms Ruth Ewura-Ama Awadzi and Ms Danielle Amo-Mensah. The Overall Best in the Business programme is Ms Rebecca Gyamfi Koranteng. The only male, who picked the Overall Best in the General Arts programme, Mr John Kwadwo Owusu, is a product of Mfantsipim Senior High.

Ms Quaye, a Level 100 student of the Ashesi University College, stepped up the podium proudly to receive the Overall Best Student award in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) amidst fanfare and applause. She also emerged best in the General Science Programme.

And for her award, she received $600, a citation and a certificate, while her former school received a plaque. In addition for topping all, Jessica received a full scholarship package covering tuition, feeding and accommodation as well as a laptop from Universal Merchant Bank (UMB).

As the Best Student in the General Science, she further received $400.

Other award winners

Ms Awadzi, a student of the University of Ghana, Legon, who picked the second runner-up place, received $500, a citation and a certificate, while her former school received a plaque. She also received a laptop from UMB.

For placing first runner-up, Ms Amo-Mensah also a former student of Wesley Girls’ and currently level 100 student of the University of Ghana, took home $400 and a certificate, while Wesley Girls received a plaque. She also received a laptop from Universal Merchant Bank for her effort.

The three students will be honoured next week by WAEC for also emerging as the Overall Best candidates in the WAEC countries. They will receive the WAEC Excellence Award at the council’s conference being hosted by the Ghana office in Accra.

Ms Koranteng picked the best student in the Business Programme, while Mr John Kwadwo Owusu Jnr picked the best student in General Arts. For their award, they received $400 each.

Wesley Girls’ School

It was not just all about Ghana winning awards, it was about the fact that all the three top awards went to one school – Wesley Girls’ Senior High School (SHS) in Cape Coast.

The Headmistress of the school, Mrs Betty Djokoto, was almost tired of climbing up and down the podium for four times to receive handshakes and plaques as the overall top three awardees and the best candidate in the Business Programme came from her school.

Adding colour and excitement to the achievement of the school was the fact that the guest speaker, who is the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang, also an old student, presented the overall award.

And what a way to celebrate the school and the country for an achievement of girls to coincide with the celebration of the International Women Day, which was observed last Tuesday.

Achievement

The Head of the National Office of WAEC, Very Rev Dr Samuel Nii Nmai Ollennu, said the performance of the candidates “makes Ghana the only country among the WAEC member countries to have swept all the three top awards for four times running, setting a record which any member country would find extremely difficult to equal in years to come”.

Criteria
Outlining the criterion for the award, he said a candidate was expected to obtain a minimum of eight Grade “A1s” and that candidates who qualified for the awards competed at two levels – national and international.
Rev Dr Ollennu said 112 candidates out of the total number of 268,812 who wrote the exams in 2015 scored the eight ‘A1s’, meeting the criterion for the award.
Ninety-eight of those who met the criterion offered the General Science programme, while seven each were from the General Arts and Business programmes.

High quality education

The Minister of Education, Professor Opoku-Agyemang, said the performance of the candidates confirmed the high quality of education in the country.

She said it indicated that the strategies put in place in the education system were producing the desired results, adding that “this should deepen the confidence we have in our educational system and we should desist from casting doubts about the quality of our education”.

Professor Opoku-Agyemang urged all heads of schools, supervisors and invigilators to play their roles as expected as the cycle of examinations for the 2016 commenced.

She also urged WAEC to implement in the 2016 examinations, the Item Differentia Profile software, which was piloted last year but was shelved to enable more sensitisation to be undertaken.

“This software as we have been informed will enable the council to detect cheating in the objective tests, which hitherto went undetected. Let us endeavour to put in place the necessary strategies which will sanitise our assessment processes and ensure that the objectives of assessment are met,” Professor Opoku-Agyemang said.

Ms Quaye, who spoke on behalf of the awardees, thanked God, WAEC and their parents for their roles in bringing them up and was particularly grateful to WAEC for sustaining the award scheme, which served as a motivation for students.

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