Africa Education Watch has criticised the West African Examination Council (WAEC) for the large number of supervisors from the Ghana Education Service (GES) employed in this year’s West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

The Education think tank, in its 2022 WASSCE Ghana Monitoring Report, revealed that out of the 776 supervisors, about 636, representing 82%, were GES staff.

This implies that 18%, or 140 supervisors, were external to WACE.

Africa Education Watch argues that major representation of GES staff “raises potential Conflict of Interest since the WASSCE pass rate is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for school heads and other GES directors.”

They further described the situation as “inadequate and ineffective external supervision” while indicating that centers that had GES supervisors recorded high cases of exam malpractice.

The Education Policy Research and Advocacy Organisation has therefore recommended that WAEC stops using GES staff as external supervisors.

“The GES cannot externally self-supervise their own in an exam in which many GES invigilators, supervisors, including school heads are at the centre of exam fraud for profit,” it explained.

They also want the Ghana Education Service to adopt a KPI that rewards SHS heads based on the record of no examination fraud during WASSCE as “this will checkmate the current KPI for school heads on WASSCE pass rate.”

“GES (should) sanction staff involved in examination fraud per their code of conduct,” the report added.

The 2022 WASSCE, which was written by Ghana alone this time round, commenced on August 1, with Visual Art Project Work options.

The theory papers started on Monday, August 22, 2022. On September 27, 2022, the pre-tertiary exam came to an end. 422,883 candidates from 977 schools sat for this year’s exams.

There was a collaboration between WAEC and the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) to monitor the printing of questions to prevent leakage.

Despite the joint efforts, questions for the Elective Mathematics 2 and Core Mathematics 2 papers leaked nine hours before their scheduled time to be written, Africa Education Watch reported.

It noted that “the involvement of the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), a.k.a BNI, in the printing of questions led to minimal incidences of question leakages compared to WASSCE 2021.”

The organization's 2021 WASSCE Monitoring Report found out that 11 papers had leaked.

Source: The Independent Ghana