Education think tank, Eduwatch has launched its 2022 West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) Ghana Monitoring report.
The report is an outcome of monitoring the 2022 WASSCE online and in 33 purposively sampled examination centres (comprising private and public schools) across the country between July and September 2022.
Findings from the report include Online leakages in two (2) of 12 papers monitored. Questions for the Elective Mathematics 2 and Core Mathematics 2 papers leaked nine (9) hours before their scheduled time to be written.
With enhanced questions security, the report said the involvement of the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), formerly BNI, in the printing of questions led to minimal incidences of question leakages compared to WASSCE 2021.
EDUWATCH 2022 WASSCE GHANA MONITORING REPORT LAUNCHED (002)
“The BNI’s involvement, which was highly impactful on questions security, was facilitated by the Minister of Education,” it said.
Regarding increased incidences of institutional fraud, the report said reduced leakages meant increased exam centre fraud. There were reports of cash collection between GHC300 to GHC 3,000 from candidates by some school authorities in return for supervised cheating. In some schools, questions were solved and transmitted through WhatsApp platforms or written on whiteboards for candidates to copy during the exams.
Specific ‘stongrooms’ were designated by some school authorities for solving the questions before transmitting to students.
“Inadequate and ineffective external supervision: Out of 776 supervisors deployed to 776 centres, only 18% were external from WAEC with the majority (82%) being staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES), a situation which raises potential Conflict of Interest
since the WASSCE pass rate is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for school heads and other GES directors.”
It recommended “The Ministry of Education convenes a national forum on external assessment to enable a broad, participatory review leading to a reform of Ghana’s external assessment system with focus on governance, relevance and quality assurance.
“The Ministry of Education establishes a regulatory body for the assessment sector or give NaCCA that additional mandate through an amendment of the Education Regulatory Bodies Law. The regulator will set and enforce standards, impose sanctions for noncompliance, receive public complains and regulate the operations of all agencies in the pre-tertiary assessment space, including WAEC.
“The Ministry of Education reviews the necessary legal and policy instruments to redefine the relationship between government and WAEC by removing the GES Director General from the Governing Council of WAEC. This will reduce any potential for conflict of
interest.”
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana