2026 BECE: 5 things JHS graduates ‘awaiting’ their results can do

When I finished JHS, I felt like I was standing at a junction with no signpost. The BECE result felt like the only thing between me and a real future, and nobody had told me that the road starts before the result arrives. I spent most of that waiting period doing nothing deliberate, and I arrived at SHS already behind students who had used the same weeks well.

Fourteen years on, here is what I know now that I did not know then. Before zooming into the content of this article, note that you can buy a results voucher using *713*3998# when the results are finally released.

1. SHS is wider than Science and General Arts, and that matters now

Most families default to two tracks when discussing SHS placement: Science or General Arts. The others, Visual Arts, Business, Technical/Vocational, and Home Economics, barely come up in conversation. That silence has a cost.

Ghana's creative economy is producing real income. Visual Arts SHS graduates are working
in fashion design, digital illustration, mural work, and event production, industries growing visibly in Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, and beyond. Technical and Vocational graduates in electronics repair, welding, and fabrication are among the most economically resilient young people in West African cities. These are not fallback options. They are legitimate paths that suit particular kinds of intelligence, intelligence that no BECE aggregate fully captures.

Use this waiting period to read the full list of SHS programmes available to you. Find out what each involves and where its graduates end up. One conversation with someone already in a Visual Arts or Technical school, asking honestly about their experience, will teach you more than any brochure. A fair caution: some vocational tracks have real labour market limitations depending on region and school. Research before you choose, not after.

2. Read, and let me tell you honestly why this matters

I did not read enough between JHS and SHS. I arrived in Form 1 already behind students who had spent the break reading. That gap took almost two years to close and I felt it every term in between.
Twenty pages a day. That is the whole recommendation. Not a curriculum, not a reading list. Twenty pages of anything that interests you, fiction, biography, news, science writing, anything. The habit of sustained reading is what SHS and university will demand of you, and building it now costs nothing.

If you have a library card or can get one, Ghana Library Authority branches operate in every regional capital and many districts. They are free and underused. If you have a device and data, Project Gutenberg offers thousands of downloadable books at no cost. For Ghanaian students specifically, the works of Ama Ata Aidoo and Ayi Kwei Armah are available digitally and reflect your own world back at you in ways that sharpen both language and thinking.

One book I would point you to personally is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Not because it is a school text, but because it taught me, at about your age, that a story set in a world I recognised could carry ideas that reached far beyond it. Find your version of that.

3. Learn something with your hands

Notice that the student who can fix things, who can take apart a broken appliance and put it back together, is usually also good at working through complicated problems in class. That is not a coincidence. The brain that debugs a physical object and the brain that untangles a difficult equation are doing the same thing.

Ghana’s apprenticeship ecosystem is real and accessible. Kente weaving cooperatives in Bonwire and Adanwomase take on young people informally. Electronics repair shops in secondary cities are growing fast and often welcome someone willing to observe and assist. Beekeeping is a rising income stream with serious market demand. Carpentry, tailoring, welding, phone repair: each of these teaches spatial reasoning, problem solving, and patience, qualities that every SHS curriculum will test in ways that go beyond what they explicitly teach. You do not need a formal programme. Shadow a skilled relative or neighbour for two weeks. That is enough to begin.

4. Digital literacy is the new pen and paper

Arriving at SHS without basic digital skills is like arriving without a notebook. SHS increasingly uses digital resources, e-learning platforms, research tools, WhatsApp study groups, and online references. A student who arrives knowing how to type well, use a search engine purposefully, and stay safe online is immediately ahead.

If you have regular access to a device, Google Digital Skills for Africa is free and browser- based. Practice proper typing on 10FastFingers. Learn to distinguish a reliable source from an unreliable one.

If regular device access is not your reality, that is a structural gap worth naming plainly and not your personal failing. Many district assemblies, TVET centres, churches, and community schools have computer labs that sit empty outside school hours. Ask. One hour a week over several months builds real competence.

5. Have the honest conversation, and include your family in it

This point is for students and for whoever is reading over their shoulder. In many Ghanaian homes, raising alternative SHS placement scenarios before the result arrives can feel like expecting failure. So the conversation at this point recommends is not a family planning meeting before the results drop. It is one quiet exchange with one trusted adult, asking what happens across different outcomes. Not to plan for failure. To plan like someone who takes their future seriously.

The pressure that builds around BECE results often comes from love wearing a stern face. Parents who sacrificed, relatives who are watching: their expectations are not attacks. They are investments looking for a return.

On the question of school prestige: the name of your SHS matters less than what you do there. A student who works hard at a community SHS will outperform a distracted student at a prestigious school in most of what matters. That is not the same as saying the name is meaningless. It means the name alone is never enough. Find one person in your community who attended a non-prestigious secondary school and built a life worth respecting. Ask them how. That conversation is worth more than any ranking table.

When BECE results are released, you can also buy the BECE result checker online using mobile money using *713*3998#, or alternatively, you can visit buycheckercodes.com.gh. With the purchased voucher, you can check your result at https://eresults.waecgh.org/ so you and your family can begin planning without any delay.