President Mahama has condemned the rising attacks on teachers by students. His remarks come after a video capturing a group of final-year students from Kade Senior High School (SHS) ambushing and beating the teacher outside the school premises.

The teacher, identified as Mr Michael Quayson, was attacked by the students while he was invigilating the WASSCE exam and strictly enforcing rules. The students slapped and struck him, allegedly using sticks and tree branches, while others recorded the attack.

Speaking on Monday, January 5, 2026, while addressing the Delegates Conference of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) in Accra, Ghana, President Mahama highlighted the need for the students to be prosecuted and not allowed to go scot free. According to him, such acts are criminal, slamming the conduct of the students as an audacious “sense of entitlement”.

“Disciplinary action. I saw that video of, I think, a math teacher being beaten because, when he was invigilating, he refused to allow our children to cheat. They had a sense of entitlement and asked, "Why did you not allow us to cheat?".I mean, how is that? This is assault. It's criminal, you know, the President mentioned.

President Mahama expressed his disdain about the case being settled out of legal proceedings.

“The unfortunate thing is that the matter went to the police station, and the parents of the students went to the police and said they had settled the matter amicably. But when we inquired, the police also said that the teacher was compensated, so he didn't want to press charges anymore,” he added.

He recommended, “But I said, at least the children should have been booked. They should have been taken through the legal process. And at least, if nothing else, they should have been bonded to be of good behaviour for a period of time. Then we would believe that justice had been done.”

This, he believes, will serve as a deterrent to others, as an amicable settlement was the best resolution.

“But just for parents to come and pay a little compensation, it will encourage others to do the same, you know, adding that, “And so, as for assaults on teachers, I am with you 100%. We will deal with it.”

Meanwhile, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) released the provisional results of the 2025 West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) on Saturday, November 29.

The results showed a massive surge in outright failure rates (Grade F9) across all four core subjects compared to the 2024 performance.

Stakeholders and some experts attributed the massive failure of students to the intensified crackdown on examination malpractice. Exam malpractice among students during the WASSCE is a common trend in Ghana. There have been incidents where teachers allow students to cheat at a fee, and some headteachers of schools also bribe teachers to either assist students in the exam hall or allow them to assist each other.

On some occasions, some students enter exam halls with foreign materials despite being explicitly warned not to do so.

The results of students in the 2025 WASSCE

According to the provisional results released by WAEC, the percentage of students who failed Social Studies increased steeply from 9.55% in 2024 to 27.50% in 2025, representing a 188% increase.

The other core subjects, that is, Integrated Science and English Language, also saw a doubling of their previous failure rate.

For Integrated Science, the failure rate increased by 8.93%; that is 2024 rate was 7.12%, and in 2025 it increased to 16.05%.

The failure rate for the English Language also rose from 5.88% in 2024 to 12.86% in 2025. Core Mathematics recorded the sharpest decline, with the proportion of candidates who failed rising from 6.10% in 2024 to an alarming 26.77% in 2025, more than four times higher.

Consequently, only 48.73% of candidates achieved grades A1 to C6, a steep drop from the 66.86% recorded in 2024. In absolute terms, 209,068 candidates passed Core Maths, while 114,872 (26.77%) failed outright with an F9. Put simply, for every four students who sat for the exam, one failed Core Mathematics

National Coordinator for the District Road Improvement Programme (DRIP), Nii Lante Vanderpuye, has attributed the decline in students’ performance in the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) to addiction to social media and poor reading culture.

Speaking to the media on Thursday, December 4, Nii Lante Vanderpuye noted that reading culture and study habits among students have been compromised by the growing obsession with digital platforms.

“I am not surprised by the result. As a nation, as parents and guardians, we have been taken in by modern trends and the technical innovations in our lives. Our children are not focusing enough on what will help them concentrate on their education. One of the things we must look at critically is how to reconcentrate their focus away from tablets and media, because it is making the children lazy,” he cautioned.

Meanwhile, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has indicated that the results obtained by candidates who sat for the 2025 WASSCE reflect their true abilities. Speaking to the media on Monday, December 1, Daniel Fenyi of the GES Public Relations Unit noted that the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) cannot be blamed for the results, as they only assess what the candidates produce.

According to him, “Indeed, we perfectly agree, and not that we just agree, but we work closely with WAEC. We monitor, we supervise, and we collaborate with them to conduct these examinations. And so it is not that we agree, that is actually the case, that the results you see are a true reflection of the competencies of our learners.

“You wouldn’t train your learners for three good years, take them through all the lessons, teach them, expose them to all the nec