Educationist Prof Stephen Adei says the decline in the 2025 WASSCE results may be due to far tighter exam supervision, which he believes has exposed long-standing weaknesses in Ghana’s education system.

Speaking on the Joy FM Super Morning Show on Monday, December 1, Prof Adei explained that stronger monitoring may have limited widespread cheating that often inflates results.

“The reality could be that invigilation and vigilance were better during the last examination, because examination malpractice is so widespread that a lot of them, even the passes we see, so it depends whether WAEC has been a bit more vigilant and put in a better system.”

According to him, this alone could have caused the drop: “Our results depend not so much on the students' performance, but also how many people get away with murder.”

“The decline may not be actually worse performance, but much better supervision of the examination,” he added.

Prof Adei argued that Ghana must confront the deeper issues within basic education, which he says are the true roots of the problem.

“First of all, this is not something that is happening today. It has been with us for a long time. Some of us have been talking about it after the examination. Everybody thought we heard it, and it goes quiet.”

He added that the biggest source of the challenge is at the primary level. “The main source of the problem happens at the basic school level before the secondary school. The foundation we have in the public schools is what the World Bank describes as 'schooling without learning'.”

Prof Adei warned that many pupils are being promoted without the necessary skills: “Generally, we don't have the right material for about half of them. It's almost like a wholesale promotion.”

Unless the foundational crisis is fixed, he cautioned, Ghana should expect little improvement: “Unless we tackle a fundamental issue of almost producing illiterate people at the basic level, in fact, these results will be the best we can hope for.”

He cited his own experience, stating, “In fact, in the branch of our school in my village, when they come from public schools, we spend one full year for them to meet the normal JHS standard before they proceed to the senior secondary school.”

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has confirmed a national education concern with the release of the provisional WASSCE 2025 results, revealing a worrying surge in the outright failure rate (Grade F9) across all four core subjects compared to the 2024 results.

Read also: 2025 WASSCE results: Nearly 1 out of 4 candidates failed Core Mathematics and Social Studies