The Chief Examiners’ report for the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) has revealed that a significant number of candidates struggled to answer application-based questions, contributing to the low grades recorded in the exams.

Figures released by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) indicate that performance in all four core subjects has been the lowest in the past four years.

Speaking on the Edutalk show on Joy News, Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu said most of the candidates memorised the concepts but failed to apply them during the exams.

“What is important, after evaluating the examiner’s report, is that many of the learners struggle with application,” Mr Iddrisu explained. “They may have prepared by memorising concepts, but this year’s questions focused more on the application of what they’ve learned.”

He stressed the need for improvement in the delivery of secondary education, urging all stakeholders to commit to bettering the system. “I think that we should all commit to improving the provision of quality secondary education,” he added.

Similarly, Dr Peter Anti, Executive Director of the Institute for Education Studies, also discussed the challenges posed by the nature of the questions in an interview on the JoyNews Desk.

According to Dr Anti, many students struggled with core mathematics due to the format of the questions.

“I have spoken to most core math teachers, and one of the things that comes across in their responses to the challenges students face with core math is the fact that the questions were in word form instead of the normal numeric form,” Dr Anti explained.

“When questions are placed in that way, what it means is that the students have to first read and understand and then apply the very basic principles, whether it’s indices, whether it’s trigonometry, or whatever it is that they have learned, to the demands of the question before they will be able to answer,” he added.