Three senior schools excel in BGCSE

Staff Writer | Friday February 12, 2010 00:00

The schools are Tutume Mcconnell Community College with a student awarded 6 A* 2 A 1 B, Selebi Phikwe Senior Secondary School with 7 A* 1 A 1 B and another with 6 A* 2 A 1 B. Moshupa Secondary School registered 6 A* 2 A 1 B while Naledi Senior Secondary School students registered 6 A* 3 A and others registered 8 A* 1 A.

Of the 31,468 candidates for the 2009 examination, 47,955 of the grades issued were C, and 34.75% of the grades issued were C or better with 8,751 students awarded grade C or better, posing a 1.98 percentage compared to the previous year.  Of the total candidates who sat for the examinations 14,028 are male and 17,428 are female, while the gender of 12 candidates is not recorded on the database. Currently there are about 180 candidates whose results are withheld for one or more syllabuses.  Candidates for whom all results are withheld are not included.  

As in previous years, the overall performance of male candidates (as measured by the percentage of grades issued which is C or better was better than that of female candidates. For all syllabuses, 35.94% of the grades awarded to male candidates are grade C or better.  For female candidates the corresponding percentage is 33.78%.  The summary results from the BEC explained that measured in this way, the ‘gap’ between male and female performance has changed little in recent years. It further explained that in the case of Languages, as in previous years, female candidates performed better than male candidates (33.54% of the grades awarded to females were grade C or better compared to 26.80% for male candidates), although the gap between males and females was smaller in 2009 than in 2008. In the case of Mathematics, once again male candidates did better than female candidates, although there was little change between 2007 and 2008.   For the Sciences, the percentage of both male and female candidates who were awarded grade C or better was lower than in 2007, although the gap between the performance of male and female was smaller in 2009 than in 2008.  The summary results revealed that measured in this way, the performance of female candidates continues to improve compared to performance of male candidates, although the change between 2008 and 2009 is small. This proportion of candidates with 5 C’s, who are female, has increased from 50.04% in 2005 to 51.78% in 2009.  The total number of students with 5 C’s or better decreased from 8,172 in 2008 to 7,703 this year.  The percentage of students awarded 5 C’s or better decreased by 4.17%.

BGCSE is a syllabus-based examination.  Each syllabus is graded on an 8 point scale from A* to G.  Candidates who fail to reach the standard required for Grade G are regarded as ‘unclassified’ and no result is reported on the certificate.  O level syllabuses are graded on a 5-point scale from A to E.