The West African Examinations Council (WAEC), has discredited portions of the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) report released by education think tank – Africa Education Watch.
In the report, Africa Education Watch stated that the general exam malpractices recorded could affect the credibility of the national exam.
But the Council says portions of the report that touched on the leakage of a mathematics paper and the widespread details of examiners and the methodology itself are fraught with inaccuracies.
In an interview with Citi News, the Head of WAEC’s Legal department, Rev. Victor Brew, assigned the reasons for their assertion.
“There are a number of inaccuracies in this report that was launched by Africa Education Watch, and we are prepared to speak to these factual inaccuracies. For example, the mention of the leakage of the Mathematics paper in the 2020 WASSCE, and the fact that WAEC had not done much to deal with the matter is not true. It is not true that we did not do anything about the purported leakage.”
“There wasn’t a leakage to the degree that you will say that the paper needed to be annulled. You look at the methodology, and they say they used key informants in selected schools to whom they have signed a non-disclosure agreement to bring out a report. This is supposed to be a report based on research investigation, I think that Africa Education Watch must come again,” he said.
As part of eleven recommendations proffered by the education think tank, after it conducted what it calls a thorough research and investigation into the 2020 WASSCE, Africa Education Watch asked the government of Ghana to take steps to divorce GES and the Ministry of Education from WAEC’s Governing Committee.
It also asked the government to break the monopoly enjoyed by WAEC in assessing students and conducting examinations in Ghana by regulating the powers of the council.
Speaking on this, however, Rev. Victor Brew said these proposals made by the Africa Education Watch are simply not possible.
“With regard to the issue of regulation, WAEC is supposed to be an international examination body, serving not only Ghana. There are other member countries that have their own governing body which regulates activities. On the issue of monopoly, in terms of pre-tertiary assessment, WAEC Ghana Office is not the only entity. You are talking about GES, NVTI, NABTEX, so the issue of monopoly is a moot one.”
