The 2015 BECE leaks — WAEC’s failure or society’s craze for success?

Some subject papers of the annual Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for final-year junior high school students in the country leaked this year.

The leak was so massive and widespread that as many as five subject papers had to be cancelled and later rewritten. 

In the course of writing the examination, teachers who had foreknowledge of the questions took photographs of them and used whatsapp, a social media platform to send them to their friends. This caused the leakage of the questions to be widespread as people had easy access to them.

The subject papers were: English Language 2, Mathematics 2, Social Studies 2, Integrated Science 2 and Religious and Moral Education 2.

Surprisingly, before the start of the BECE, the Minister of Education, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang had cautioned the candidates, teachers, supervisors and invigilators against any examination malpractices. But all this obviously, fell on deaf ears.

Security

To ensure the credibility of its examinations, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) put in various measures to stem the leakage of questions. The measures included tight security at its printing facility, where staff are not allowed to go with pens, earrings or necklaces among other things.

Moreover, three types of questions are set and printed ahead of the examination. This is to make it difficult for the printing staff to know which set would be administered. So with all these measures, among others, one wonders what might have resulted in the leak of the questions for those papers.

According to the Head of National Office of WAEC, Rev. Nii Nmai Ollennu, the organisation had not rested in its quest to deal with malpractices and, therefore, introduced a new software to detect malpractices in the objective examinations.

Actions

To prevent a recurrence of exam malpractices, a number of sanctions were introduced to serve as a deterrent to others. For instance, 453 students who took part in this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) had their entire results cancelled, while 1,859 students also had their subject results cancelled.

Eight candidates, who had their entire results cancelled, were also barred from taking any of WAEC’s exams for two years. The entire results of candidates from 185 schools have also been withheld pending the conclusion of investigations.

Students

Students reacted differently when the five papers were cancelled. While others supported the decision of WAEC, others kicked against it. For those in favour, they said it was unfair for some candidates to have access to the questions, while those against the decision believed it was very harsh to punish all candidates when it was not all of them who benefited from the leak.

The candidates who complained they had spent sleepless nights, braving the power outages by using torch lights and other forms of light to study noted that they were disappointed and shocked at the news of the leak and its magnitude.

Master Suraj Mohammed of the Al-Waleed Islamic School said the cancellation of the papers was bad for him since he started preparing for the examination when he entered Form Three.

“Indeed, cancelling the papers has had a negative effect on me because I am unable to concentrate now, knowing that there are other papers to write.”

Master Maurice Quartey of the Ridge Church School said it was very sad for WAEC to cancel the five papers since they had worked extra hard to prepare for the exam.

“It has really disorganised us. We have been studying for a long time and this has dampened our spirits. In spite of that, we would do our best to write the rest of the papers very well,” he said.

Educationist

An educationist, Mr Anis Haffer, called for a critical look at the science component of the curriculum used in the assessment of the junior high school candidates during the BECE.

According to him, part of the assessment at the BECE should be hands-on projects such as fish farming, rice production and cotton processing rather than the focus on the grammar type which resulted in the leakage of examination questions.

“This is a Third World country, under no circumstances can we become First World if all we do is the academics. We have been doing this since 1957 ...we must begin to reorient the minds of our young people from the academics into hands-on projects,” he said.

“The earlier we begin to get our young people to know that the essence of education is to solve problems, the better it would be for us. If someone is in JHS and is doing a project on fish farming along our river banks, when he comes out of school he should get a job to do. If you have someone in the North who is processing cotton, he does not have to come to Accra to be a kayayo. There is something that she can do”.

Solution

All stakeholders, parents, teachers, school heads, chiefs, religious leaders, WAEC and the educational authorities would have to play their part to ensure that there would never again be leaks in such international examinations to give schools foreknowledge of examination questions.

Cheating, should not be tolerated and for school authorities who connive with others so as to make their students score 100 per cent BECE passes, it is unpardonable. It is time to name and shame such schools to stop this bad practice.