3 SDA students boycott WASSCE slated for Saturday amid Sabbath

In 2020, three students of the Agona Senior High Technical School boycotted the Asante Twi paper in the 2020 West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School scheduled for Saturday.

Speaking in an interview monitored by Pretertiary.com, they said they abandoned the Asante Twi paper of the WASSCE because they could not flout their strict observance of Saturday as the Sabbath day of the Lord, as members of the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Church.

Instead, they said they would rather register and write the paper in the November-December (Nov/Dec) edition of the examination, if it is slated for any other day apart from Saturday, than flout their religious belief.

One of the three students in the radio interview with Accra-based Asempa FM on its Eko Sii Sen talk programme on Monday, August 10, 2020, giving a reason for his decision, said he was standing by his faith.

He said apart from the three of them who boycotted the paper in his school at Agona in the Ashanti Region, there were other Adventist students in the same school who sat for the Twi examination.

The Asante Twi of the 2020 WASSCE for School was conducted on Saturday after the outbreak of the unforeseen coronavirus (Covid-19) disrupted the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination timetable.

The 2020 WASSCE for School timetable, first released by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in January 2020, for the examination did not have any paper slated for Saturday.

But when a revised timetable was released on July 6, 2020, it had some papers slated for Saturday, with some members of the SDA Church expressing concern that compelling Adventist students to write some papers on Saturday was wrong.

They argued that no WASSCE paper had ever been written on a Saturday and subsequently petitioned the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service (GES), and West African Examinations Council (WAEC).

The church submitted two proposals asking for the Saturday papers to be rescheduled or that Adventist students who were to write papers on Saturday should be quarantined and made to write the paper after sundown same day.

Shortly after the news went viral, the Seventh-day Adventist Church said it would absorb the registration cost of the Nov/Dec or WASSCE private examination for students who decided to boycott the WASSCE papers scheduled for Saturday in accordance with their beliefs.

Reacting to the WASSCE candidates’ move, Dr Solace Asafo, Communication Director of Southern Ghana Union, said that the actions of the students conform with the teachings of the church.

The Southern Ghana Union Communication Directors said that while the church does not have a stance against students writing exams on Saturdays, it fully endorses their personal decision to boycott the papers.

“For those who choose not to write, we’ll register them for Nov/Dec, and we have the assurance that those papers will not be for Saturday because we engaged WAEC, GES, and the Minister of Education,” she said.

Dr Solace Asafo added, “The SDA, unlike other Christians, worships on Saturdays according to the biblical injunction right from Genesis to Exodus. So, in acceptance of all the ten commandments, we believe that the day is God’s day because He said He created the world, set it apart, and rested on that day. That is what we teach our members. You have six days to work, do all your regular activities, but on the sixth day, which is the day of the Lord our God, you are to set it apart for holy use. Don’t seek your own pleasure on that day.”

The Communication Director of Southern Ghana Union stated, “We teach our members to uphold the ten commandments; however, the choice to do it or not to do it lies with the individual. We don’t force people

The children who did not write the exams have been taught what is right. They chose to do what is right. What their conscience told them. They stood by their conviction and belief

The church does not legislate behaviour. It cannot say write or do not write because one day you’ll not stand before God and say my pastor says I shouldn’t write, that’s why I did not write. The church’s stand is that no secular activity should be done on Saturdays.”