The Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) has called on the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) and the Ministry of Education (MoE) to re-negotiate the fees for invigilators, and supervisors and ensure the prompt payment of same.
According to Eduwatch the high stakes nature of Ghana’s secondary education external assessment system has led to a strong candidates’ demand for examination fraud, backed by school/community participation with monetary incentives. It revealed that this continues to sustain and grow the menace of examination fraud into a lucrative business activity.
Contained in its 2022 WASSCE Ghana Monitoring report, Eduwatch as part of its recommendation to tackle examination fraud stated that it will be prudent to increase the fees of invigilators and supervisors to forestall fraud in WASSCE.
“The MoE and WAEC must re-negotiate the fees for invigilators, and supervisors and ensure the prompt payment of same.”
Eduwatch
The education think tank expressed the need for WAEC to equally engage the services of external supervisors who are not staff of GES, or residents of the districts they would be assigned to. Additionally, it stated that the GES must sanction staff involved in examination fraud, in accordance with their code of conduct.
“The introduction of other assessment bodies into the pre-tertiary assessment space to compete with WAEC must be considered by the MoE. The CID must investigate and prosecute perpetrators of examination fraud with evidence provided in petitions submitted by WAEC and Eduwatch during and after the 2021 WASSCE.”
Eduwatch
Resolving issues of examination leakages
To curb incidences of examination leakages, Eduwatch highlighted that the National Investigative Bureau (NIB) must investigate the leakage of questions, the outcome of which must improve their security systems and accountability. It explained that persons responsible for the leakage, and those culpable for commercializing leaked questions must be sanctioned in accordance with law.
“The MoE must explore the possibility of providing access to market-led, pre-university distance programmes for candidates who score at least E8 in all subjects, to improve and pursue careers. This would ensure WASSCE candidates who do not score F in their core or electives are supported to upgrade.”
Eduwatch
Eduwatcn noted that there is considerable “inertia of law enforcement” and administrative bodies, either informed by limited capacity or institutional will to identify and sanction all perpetrators of this fraud timeously and decisively. It noted that this creates an environment of impunity among supply side actors such as school authorities, question marketers, supervisors, and security officials.
“Some teachers and school authorities, contrary to their professional duty as invigilators, supervisors, tutors, and mentors of discipline, have rather become stakeholders in this fraudulent business. Similarly, some bad elements within the security system, instead of ensuring a watertight questions security, leak questions to their questions marketing agents for profit motives.”
Eduwatch
Eduwatch believes that the introduction by the Minister of Education, of the NIB, an external security agency, to augment the work of the local police and provide support to WAEC, has brought substantial improvement in questions security, albeit limited, as the NIB is not, and cannot be present at every examination centre.
Amid these challenges, it underscored that the apparent need for reform system is hampered by the absence of a regulator for the assessment sector, coupled with resistance of WAEC to radical reforms proposed by Civil Society and the MoE.
“There appears to be no consensus between WAEC, MoE and Civil Society on the strategy, approach and roadmap for reforming the external assessment system. Ghana must initiate a conversation on reforming her assessment system, and facilitate similar conversations within the WAEC Community- Nigeria, Liberia, Gambia and Sierra Leone.”
Eduwatch
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