GIJ Rector scraps resit exams

Effective the second semester of the next academic year, students of the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) will no longer have the benefit of rewriting a course they have failed at a stipulated time scheduled by the school.

This new arrangement was revealed by the Rector of the school, Professor Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo at a students’ durbar last Friday.

Initially, there was a scheduled period on the academic calendar for the rewriting of failed papers.

But addressing the students, Prof. Kwansah-Aidoo maintained that the practice was not a usual one in other universities running the semester system.

He further explained that the provision of a room for the writing of resist examination gives room for students to be lazy during examinations, thereby causing them to fail.

According to him, the move is aimed at encouraging students to work hard and pass their end of semester exams.

“…in my experience, nowhere in the world do we run a semester system and then have to resist of examination as well. It is an encouragement for people to mess up…it baffles me that anybody would go and write any exam in the hope they’ll go and repeat that exam; it is not a good idea” – he stated.

He thus admonished the students to aim to pass their exams at the first attempt.

“…aim to get it out of the way once and for all and that’s it. So management has decided that after this year, we would not have resit examinations again.” – he said.

This new directive implies that any student who fails in a course would have to wait till the next academic year when that course is being offered before he/she can write the exams.

Example; if a Level 100 student fails in any of his courses in the second semester of the academic year, he would have to wait the next academic year’s second semester and register for that course again.