The West African Examination Council (WAEC) is cautioning education advocates, the African Education Watch and other stakeholders who peddle what the council describes as reckless information about examination papers to stop.

This was made known at a press briefing to update the nation on the ongoing West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

Executive Director of Africa Watch Kofi Asare stated on his Facebook wall that the Food and Nutrition paper 3 was leaked on social media before the students got hold of them. But, he noted, he reported what he had noticed to WAEC.

According to the Head of the national office at WAEC, Wendy Addy-Lamptey, however, “the papers circulated by Eduwatch were not the original papers sent to the schools.’’

She added, "the supposed leaked papers were fraught with grammatical errors which cannot be said as coming from WAEC."

Mrs Addy-Lamptey continued to state, "what was sent to the schools 4 days ahead of the examinations was an instructional guide and not the examination papers.’’  This was already in the public domain; hence we are surprised that someone takes it and refers to it as a leaked document.’ she quizzed

She wonders why Eduwatch would circulate such ‘reckless information’ which usually puts  "needless pressure on WAEC, the candidates, and their parents."

WAEC’s worry was how this would affect the credibility of educational certificates from Ghana on the international stage “this is not the first time we have had such misleading circulation from Eduwatch." Mrs Addy-Lamptey stressed.

"We welcome feedback to improve but not unverified ones. Local and international bodies that use our results for the admission of Ghanaians into tertiary institutions may doubt the credibility of the certificates, making the child the ultimate loser."

She also assured that measures have been put in place to reduce the delays witnessed at some centres "our major challenge is that the moment these question papers leave our depot, we don’t have much control. 

"We release the codes to open the paper bags 45 minutes before the exams, but sometimes there is traffic, so some centres receive them late. This brings the issues, so we have to be very careful when releasing the codes so that there are not many issues with leakage. "

Head of legal at WAEC Rev. Victor Brew cautioned against spreading false information, or they would be taken on “when we say we will take the matter further, it means many things and collaborating is part of it.

"We should not in one breath say we are collaborating then in another breath, we go fishing for something untoward. "

Some 446,321 candidates in 965 schools are sitting for the exams consisting of 651 public and 314 private schools.

The total figure, making up 221,437 males and 234,884 females, represents an increase of 18.7% over the 2020 total figure.