A well mastered, planned education intervention initiated by the Member of Parliament for Bekwai, Ralph Poku-Adusei, has attracted applause following a sharp improvement in the academic performance of Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates across the municipality.
The intervention, known as the School Starter-Pack Scholarship (SSPS), was introduced alongside the revival of the School Performance Appraisal Meeting (SPAM) after concerns over declining BECE results in the Bekwai Municipality.
For more than six years, the municipality had witnessed a worrying decline in academic performance, with the situation reaching a point where the overall best BECE aggregate from public schools in the 2024/2025 academic year stood at Aggregate 18.
For an area with a long tradition of producing professionals and academic achievers, the development prompted the Bekwai MP to seek answers beyond the provision of physical infrastructure.
Rather than treating the situation as simply an examination problem, Mr Poku-Adusei brought together key stakeholders in the education sector in early 2025 to examine the factors contributing to the decline.
The engagement brought together the Bekwai Municipal Education Directorate, teachers, parents, circuit supervisors, civil society representatives and students, providing a platform for stakeholders to discuss the challenges affecting teaching, learning and examination outcomes.
The discussions resulted in the reintroduction of SPAM, which the MP supported to cover schools across all 10 educational circuits in the constituency.
The appraisal identified several interconnected challenges, including parental apathy, gaps in teacher motivation and supervision, student indiscipline, low self-esteem, inadequate teaching and learning materials, poor learning environments, limited academic competition and weak feedback mechanisms between schools and the Municipal Education Directorate.
According to the MP, the findings demonstrated that improving education outcomes required more than constructing school buildings or providing physical resources.
He argued that children also needed motivation, accountability, recognition and an environment in which academic excellence could be visibly rewarded. It was against this background that the School Starter-Pack Scholarship was conceived.
A scholarship built around merit
The SSPS was designed as a merit-based intervention rather than a conventional welfare programme.
Under the arrangement, the Municipal Education Directorate takes responsibility for identifying the best graduating candidate from every public and private school in each community, based on BECE aggregate.
Where two or more candidates record the same aggregate, their raw scores are used to determine the eventual recipient.
The approach, according to the programme’s proponents, is intended to create healthy competition among students and establish a clear incentive for academic excellence.
The 2026 package includes a Mackintosh mattress, pillow, plastic ProviBox and suitcase, providing beneficiaries with what is described as a complete boarding-school starter pack.
The programme has also introduced a separate recognition system for exceptional academic achievement.
For the 2026 edition, five categories were created for the overall best awards: Overall Best Male Student from a public school, Overall Best Female Student from a public school, Overall Best Male Student from a private school, Overall Best Female Student from a private school, and Overall Best Person with Disability.
The overall winners received the starter-pack items as well as a laptop, while the Best PWD Student was additionally awarded an educational scholarship of GH¢2,000 per term throughout Senior High School by the MP.
The 2026 overall winners include Miss Owusu Adwoa Serwaa of Dominase M/A JHS, who recorded Aggregate 7; Master Yamoah Bordom Benjamin of Bekwai APS JHS, Aggregate 8; Miss Appiah Kubi Annabella of Amazing Grace JHS, Aggregate 6; and Master Frimpong Owusu Emmanuel of Amazing Grace JHS, also Aggregate 6.
Master Kingsley Owusu of Dominase M/A JHS was recognised as the Best PWD Student.
From Aggregate 18 to Aggregate 6
The most striking development cited by the programme is the change in the municipality’s top BECE performance within a year.
While the overall best aggregate from public schools was Aggregate 18 in the 2024/2025 BECE, the 2025/2026 results produced an overall best aggregate of 6, with a number of students from public schools recording single-digit aggregates.
Other schools have also recorded notable performances, including Senfi Methodist JHS with Aggregate 8, Ofoase-Kokobin M/A with Aggregate 10, Poano with Aggregate 9 and Abodom Methodist with Aggregate 8.
Perfect and Amazing Grace schools also recorded aggregates of 7 and 6 respectively.
For the MP, the figures provide an early indication that interventions combining accountability with motivation can influence educational outcomes.
Mr Poku-Adusei said the objective was never simply to distribute items to students but to establish a system capable of changing attitudes towards academic performance.
He said: “SSPS was introduced not as a donation, but as a deliberate strategy for transformation.”
According to him, the programme is built on the principle that students should understand that hard work and academic excellence have tangible recognition.
He further explained that the programme was deliberately connected to SPAM so that the performance of students would not be considered in isolation from the responsibilities of teachers, parents, school authorities and education managers.
“We want this to outlive my tenure”.
Mr Poku-Adusei has emphasised that the SSPS is not intended to be a one-off constituency event or an intervention dependent solely on his tenure as MP.
He said the programme was being structured as an institution capable of continuing beyond the current political administration.
“The SSPS has come to stay,” he stated, stressing that the initiative would be developed into a sustainable educational support programme.
He said a dedicated SSPS Board had been established to help oversee the programme, review its selection criteria and continuously improve the package.
“This is not a one-man show; it is an institution,” the MP said, explaining that the long-term objective was to ensure that the intervention could continue to support academic excellence in Bekwai regardless of changes in political leadership.
He also disclosed plans to introduce a Best Teacher Awards Scheme (BTAS) as part of the wider programme.
The proposed scheme, currently undergoing its final framework development, is intended to recognise teachers who contribute significantly to improved educational outcomes.
Mr Poku-Adusei believes rewarding students without recognising the teachers who help produce those results would leave an important part of the education equation unattended.
Looking beyond BECE
For the Bekwai MP, the ultimate measure of the programme will not be the number of mattresses, suitcases or laptops distributed.
Instead, he wants the intervention to be judged by what happens to the beneficiaries years after leaving basic school.
He said the constituency’s ambition was to follow the academic progress of beneficiaries beyond BECE and Senior High School and eventually see more young people from Bekwai progress into tertiary education and professional careers.
“We envisage a future where each student from Bekwai transitions not just into SHS, but into tertiary,” Mr Poku-Adusei said.
He added: “We will continue to monitor the performance of these SSPS beneficiaries at the SHS level and ensure that in the next 5-10 years, Bekwai will have an increase in the number of doctors, engineers, teachers, security officers, nurses, businessmen and women, bankers, lawyers, pastors and other skilled professionals who are all indigenes of Bekwai.”
According to him, that long-term objective forms part of his broader “Self-Sufficient Constituency” vision for Bekwai.
The next phase
The MP said the next phase of the programme would seek partnerships with individuals, businesses and corporate organisations to expand the number of beneficiaries.
The plan also includes extending support to more students in each community and creating a wider recognition platform for students who achieve single-digit BECE aggregates.
The proposed target is to recognise students who obtain aggregates between 6 and 10, thereby broadening the incentive for academic excellence beyond only the very top performers.
The SSPS therefore represents an attempt to combine academic competition, stakeholder accountability, teacher recognition and practical support for students within one education framework.
Its early results will inevitably require sustained monitoring over subsequent years to determine whether the improvement in BECE performance can be maintained.
For now, however, the shift from an Aggregate 18 top performance in the previous year to an Aggregate 6 in the latest results has given the programme a significant outcome to build upon.
The larger question for Bekwai is whether the intervention can transform that one-year improvement into a sustained culture of academic excellence.
For Mr Poku-Adusei, the answer lies in institutionalising the system, expanding partnerships and following students beyond the basic school level.
“When we invest in these 100 best BECE candidates today, we are investing in 100 future doctors, engineers and leaders who will return to build Bekwai,” he said.
