WAEC Withholds 48,855 Results ... Over Alleged Malpractices By Students in 2019 Wassce

By Jonathan Donkor

THE West African Examination Council (WAEC) has withheld the entire provisional results of 48,855 candidates of this year's West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), over alleged malpractices.

It said affected candidates; constituting 14.12 per cent of the 346,094 candidates who sat for the paper, would have to wait until ongoing investigation into the allegation was concluded.

"The withheld results of candidates many be cancelled or released based on the outcome of the investigation," a release issued in Accra on Monday by Mrs Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, Head of Public Affairs of WAEC Ghana, said.

It said the malpractices included bringing foreign materials such as prepared notes , printed material , and mobile phones to the exam hall, collusion among candidates and planned cheating with help from some supervisors and school authorities.

Giving details of the results of the four core subjects, it said in English Language , 167,733, representing 48.96 per cent obtained grades A1 toC6 with 100,781 (29.42 per cent) had grades D7 and E8 while 74,038(21.61 per cent) failed.

For Core Mathematics, it said 223,737(65.31 per cent) obtained A1 to C6; 72,408( 21 per cent) had D7 and E8 with 46,384 (13.54 per cent ) failing while in Social Studies 257,838 (75.43 per cent ) got A1 to C6; 52,983 (15.50 per cent) obtained D7 and E8 with 30,970 (9.06 per cent) getting F9.

The number of candidates who had A1 to C6 in Integrated Sciences were 216,095 (63.17 per cent) with 91,151 (27 per cent) scored D7 and E8 while 34,825 (10.18 per cent ) had F9.

The release said the provisional results indicated that there were improvements in the performance of candidates at A1 toC6 in all four core subjects when compared to last year's results.

Core mathematics recorded the most significant improvement as passes increased to 65.31 per cent from 38.33 per cent with passes in Integrated Science moving to 63.17 per cent from 50.52 per cent.

" English Language recorded a modest improvement of 46.91 per cent to 48.96 per cent Social Studies also showed a slight improvement in the performance of candidates(73.27 per cent to 75.43)" the release said.

It said the total of 346,094 candidates entered for the examination was 9.2 per cent higher than the 2019 candidature of 316,999 and made up of 170,857 (49.37 per cent) males.

A total of 2,322(0.67 per cent) of the candidates who registered were absent from the examination.

The release said the results could be accessed on the council's website ahead of its dispatch to the various schools and cautioned the public against impostors who promise to change their results at a fee.

" Candidates are to note that all WAEC results are well secured and can be authenticated . Persons with forged results will be exposed" it said.

Meanwhile the Ghana Education Service (GES) says it is impressed with the improvement in this year's results especially in the core subjects as compared to last year's.

A statement issued by Cassandra Twum Ampofo, GES Public Relations Officer yesterday attributed the success to measures instituted by the service including increase in contact hours and change of WASSCE period from February /June to April/June.

It also cited periodic meeting with Council of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) over low performing schools and changes in the academic calendar as other measures accounting for the feat.

It congratulated teachers across the country for the performance and urged them to work harder to improve the results next year.

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