The Ghana Education Service (GES) has urged the public to take advantage of its hotlines and report cases of examination malpractice in their communities to help deal with the canker.

The GES is alarmed at the reported cases of persons caught in examination malpractice in spite of measures put in place to deal with the problem during assessments.

A Deputy Director-General of the GES, Professor Smile Gavua Dzisi, who made the call, indicated that the hotlines, 020-1360-789 for calls and SMS and 020-1360-786 for WhatsApp, had been helpful in the fight against examination malpractice in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), with people providing information, hence the need to do more.  

Prof. Dzisi gave a firm assurance that those involved in examination malpractice would be caught.

He said this during a tour of some senior high schools (SHSs) in Accra to observe the commencement of the theory aspect of this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates (SC) yesterday.

“We have people all over the place, security agencies that have joined all sorts of secret platforms, so if you try, you'll be in trouble.

So, we will continue to encourage the public to send us information.

We need the whistleblowers so that we'll be able to stop this kind of malpractice during our examinations,” she said.

The tour saw her visiting Accra Girls Senior High School and Accra High School, accompanied by the Greater Accra Regional Director of Education, Hajia Katumi Natogmah Attah, and the Director of Finance of the GES, Dr Musah Imoro.

Prof. Dzisi said in spite of all the campaigns that the service had embarked upon, “we still have some teachers and invigilators who are daring”.

“We want to remind them that we'll catch them and they'll be in trouble, because so far, we have some of the teachers convicted for examination malpractice. And if you are a teacher and you indulge in examination malpractice and you are caught, that is the end of your career with the GES,” she emphasised.

The Deputy Director-General of the GES said there was a need to safeguard the integrity of the country’s examinations in order to see the true learning outcomes, so students should be left alone to do their work.

“Let's leave them, let them write the examination, and let's see the true reflection so we can know what to do and how to improve upon whatever we are doing. But when we try to give them ‘apo’, we indulge in exam malpractice -- it does not help us at all,” she said.

She added: “So once again, we are saying that let's say no to exam malpractice; parents, guardians, teachers, and all our schools. Please, leave the students alone. Let them write the examination in peace”.

Commenting on Ghana’s return to the May-June WASSCE-SC, Prof. Dzisi said not writing the WASSCE with the other member countries of WAEC came at no cost to the government.

She said the Minister of Education, the Director-General of the GES, and the WAEC worked very hard to ensure that Ghanaian candidates wrote the WASSCE with their West African counterparts.

“So, it's very significant to know that after five years, this is the first time that we are writing WASSCE-SC with other West African countries. So, we are all in line now, and that will not cost the country a lot of money.

“We have also prepared the students adequately for that, and we are very sure that we'll get great results at the end of this examination,” she said.

For her part, Hajia Attah, among other things, wished the candidates good luck in the examination. She appealed to the invigilators not to assist any child in terms of copying during the examination.

“They shouldn't send any foreign materials to aid them in the classroom. We have prepared them enough; a lot of teaching and learning went on.

“And then we are sure that the children themselves can write and make the grades they deserve. I also want to say that examination malpractice is not anything good. You get the certificates, and people doubt you. 

“We want people to be reassured that all the certificates that we are getting in Ghana are also competitive and we can use them in other countries, so let us write well. Let us stop examination malpractice,” she said.