Governor Babajide Sanwolu of Lagos State recently announced that the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) earlier scheduled for June, this year, has been postponed indefinitely. This brings to mind the quality and significance of BECE.
About ten years ago, BECE was popularly known as Junior WAEC. Most of us above 25 know some of our teachers who marked the exam scripts. But what do we have now? Over the past five years, it has been hard to find any teacher marking BECE scripts. However, BECE results are always released after some weeks of writing the exams. This raises some germane questions.
How are BECE scripts marked?
Who or what allocates the marks?
Can we say BECE certificates are earned or paid for?

It will interest you to know that so many irregularities have been found in BECE results over the past five years. How do you explain that the best Mathematics student in the class gets a D grade while the less talented one gets an A? How do you explain that a boy who never took French lessons got a B grade in BECE French results?
What are the implications of this to our educational system?
1. It brings to question the competency of our educational heads at the SUBEB level. State Ministries of Education, commissioners of education, zonal education officers, principals, school proprietors, and teachers should all be questioned.

2. If we desire a better education system at a higher level, are we not sabotaging such desires from the outset? Why give a lazy student the results of the best?

3. Undeserved results mask the child's true competencies and feed him lies. It also sets the child up for examination malpractice later on. For instance, a child who gets a super grade in his worst subject may get the feeling that he can always cut corners without hard work. What does this portend for our children and our dear country?
4. Teachers will see no need to work hard since BECE does not reflect their efforts on their students.
5. Any data educational researchers collate as a result of using students' performance in BECE will be ethically nonsensical. Since BECE may not show the true state of student's academic achievements, it will make researchers stray from the truths they seek.
6. Since we have a cankerworm as deep as this at the roots of our education system, we cannot talk of a better higher education until we deal with this issue.

For this reason, I am calling on:
all parents
teachers
proprietors
zonal educational officers
heads of state Ministries of Education
State Governors
and our dear President.
Let us save our future. Let us probe and overhaul what we call Basic Educational Certificate Examination. Obviously, our educational system will continue to be a joke until issues surrounding BECE are resolved. This is a call to save our educational system while we still can.
Yours faithfully,
Alli Olayinka.