Nearly 50% of all candidates who participated in the 2021 West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) failed the two key core subjects required to secure admission to the university.

Only 54.11% of the 446,352 candidates obtained pass marks (A1 to C6) in mathematics and 54.08% passed in English.

The data also represents an 11.6% decline in the performance of students in Core Mathematics for 2021 as against data for 2020.

Performance in English Language also saw a 3.3 per cent decline this year compared to performance in 2020.

The situation is even more worrying for more than 5,374 candidates who will have to wait for months before seeing their results or may never get to know their performance.

They’re among those whose subject results (174) or entire results (1,339) have been cancelled.   

There are another 3,667 candidates whose results have been withheld whilst WAEC officials also scrutinize scripts of 194 candidates.

More students (18.8%) registered for the 2021 examinations, with 3,545 failing to turn up for the exam.

This year, there were more females (50.4%) than males (49.6%).

The data provided by WAEC shows improvements in the performance of candidates at grades A1 to C6 in Integrated Science and Social Studies this year as against 2021.