The West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC) says it is overwhelmed by widespread examination malpractices recorded at various examination centres at the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
The National Intelligence Bureau and the Police have busted hundreds of students with foreign materials, impersonators, and invigilators aiding an exam or malpractice cartel trading questions for various sums of money.
The Exam Council says they are identifying numerous malpractices and categorising them to identify students, teachers, and supervisors involved in the cartel.
The Head of Public Affairs at the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), John Kapi, said: “We are actually taking a tally of them. Each day comes with a certain number. The numbers are so overwhelming, we are trying to categorise them. And so for now, will not be able to give you a round figure, but you can be sure that the numbers, you know, are quite big.
“We’ve mentioned Otoo Memorial SHS, we’ve mentioned Mountain High SHS, we’ve mentioned Adu Gyamfi SHS, we’ve mentioned Only Believe SHS, we’re mentioning Christian IPS, and we’ve mentioned Ideal College.
“So there are still a lot more reports that are coming in. Every day we get reports and each time we have to sit down and synthesize all of these so that we can place them in the appropriate categories.”
JoyNews gathers that the National Intelligence Bureau is getting active on these cases.
Exam malpractices gathered by WAEC so far.
• Foreign materials with candidates in exam halls: According to WAEC, a number of candidates have been caught with prepared notes, textbooks and pages torn from their textbooks with the intention of using them to their advantage in the examination hall.
• Pictures taken of question papers and circulated via social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram: The Exam Council observed that some examiners used their smartphones to take pictures of the question papers before the exam began, and these images were then shared on various social media platforms. These channels also circulate their solutions to these questions to their subscribers.
According to WAEC, the council’s security network tracked some of these snapshots to their sources. For instance, Social Studies Paper 1 was tracked to Lawrence SHS in Sunyani where the teacher who circulated the post has been arrested.
In the same vein, Biology 2 was tracked to Mountain High SHS, Elective Mathematics was tracked to Adu Gyamfi SHS in the Ashanti region.
• Impersonation: At Only Believe SHS, a national service person attempted to write the Government paper for one of the candidates but he was arrested by the police. At the same centre, two other suspected impersonators absconded. One impersonator and his accomplice, a teacher, were arrested at Christian IPS.
• Attempt to insert absentee’s script: Ideal College La Paz campus was found guilty of trying to insert scripts of seven absentee candidates into the envelope.
• Exam hall malpractice or syndicate teaching: WAEC said they have received reports that solutions were written on whiteboards for candidates to copy and these were hurriedly cleaned upon arrival of WAEC inspectors at the centres. WAEC monitoring teams captured responsible individuals and turned them over to the police.
• Seized mobile phones: About 86 mobile phones were picked up from candidates at Otoo Memorial School.