Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament's Education Committee says despite the recommendations in Africa Education Watch’s 2020 and 2021 reports, on the West African Senior High School Examination (WASCCE), WAEC has not taken any interest in addressing the issues raised.

According to Dr Clement Apaak, the magnitude of examination leakages is getting worse, but, almost every time issues of malpractices are raised, WAEC rather blames Education Watch (Eduwatch) for highlighting the issues instead of taking responsibility.

Speaking on Top Story he said, “WAEC cannot exonerate itself from what is going on. How is it possible questions will leak even before they are printed? How is it possible that when the questions are printed and are in the 'strongroom' of WAEC, they will find their way to question merchants?”

Dr Apaak stated that this, among many other things, is the reason the Minority in Parliament is calling for a bipartisan probe into irregularities and leakages of questions in examinations conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in the last 10 years.

He noted that “in all honesty, if there is any institution in this matter that ought not to be trusted, it is WAEC. The truth is that neither WAEC nor the industry has taken a keen interest in addressing these issues and that is why Parliament has to take over. We should not underrate what we are dealing with.”

This comes after WAEC denied leakage of some papers during the just ended 2021 WASSCE. The Public Affairs Director of WAEC, Agnes Teye Cudjoe told JoyNews that her outfit could not outrightly say that the papers leaked but they noticed extracts of some papers found their way on social media.

“We will not say papers leaked, extract of the paper does not mean the paper leaked, she said.

Despite assurances from the Council, there have been complaints about the leakages of examinations questions during the 2021 West African Senior High School Examinations.

Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) in a report revealed that over 11 papers leaked with officials of the Council being involved in the leakages. 

Out of the 20 papers they monitored, 11 leaked successfully while the remaining nine were recorded as fake leaks. The papers leaked before or after midnight, at the dawn of the scheduled day for examination or a few hours before the paper.

“Examination questions leakage and malpractices continue to grow from a menace into a subculture due to the high demand for questions by some students and their willingness to pay big, the assurance of profit to invigilators, teachers and supervisors, and the continued existence and preservation of security loopholes in WAEC’s questions supply chain by some recalcitrant WAEC officials, agents and assigns,” Eduwatch noted.

Aside from petitioning the CID earlier, the policy think tank recommended a high-level inquiry into the leakage of questions with specific emphasis on ascertaining the exact source of leaks within the question supply chain.

Meanwhile, in an earlier interview, Dr Apaak stated that even though the CID and Police have been tasked to investigate, they cannot be entirely independent, since some personnel are made to escort the papers from WAEC’s 'strongroom', where papers are kept, to the centres.

He added that WAEC is also not capable of conducting an investigation because it is complicit, neither can the Ministry of Education nor the Ghana Education Service be entirely neutral if they issue a probe.

Dr Apaak stated that the bipartisan probe will aid in getting to the bottom of the cheating scandals and profer solutions to deal with it.