The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has accused heads of basic schools whose candidates engage in examinations malpractices of helping to perpetrate the illegality.

WAEC has withheld the results of nearly 12,000 students who sat for this year’s exams for allegedly engaging in various acts exams malpractice.

The examinations body reviewed some of its exams regulations this year to minimize irregularities in the exam halls but the problem persists.

According to a statement released by the exams body Thursday, out of 420,188 candidates who wrote the exams this year, 11,759 candidates from 337 schools have had their results withheld pending the conclusion of investigations into alleged examinations malpractice.

The subject results of 398 candidates have also been cancelled for various offences including bringing foreign material into the exams hall and collusion.

The statement adds that the entire results of 64 candidates have been cancelled. It says these students brought mobile phones into the exams hall and received external help.

Again, the entries of 13 candidates were nullified as they were not bona fide students of the schools which registered them for the exam and their continuous assessment forms were forged.

Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, Head of Public Affairs at WAEC told Joy News, most of these malpractices occur with the connivance of some heads of schools and parents.

She explained that, “we have cases of candidates wanting to pass without haven’t spent their time learning, school authorities who want to portray to the entire Ghanaian society that well this school their candidates are doing very well so we had 100% or all our candidates passed and they’ve gone to these schools because you have these malpractices happening with the connivance of school authorities.”

According to Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, the Council is blaming school authorities, candidates, and parents “because if you have reports of candidates, before the exams or after the paper, being asked to contribute some money to be given to invigilators and all that, where are the candidates then going to get the money from? Definitely they are going to get the money from parents.” 

These, she noted, are not cases of examination leakage but rather they are cases of somebody taking the question paper out of the examination halls, before or during the exams, and then answering the questions for the students.