The University of Ghana (UG) has confirmed it will uphold its strict admission cut-off points for the 2025/2026 academic year, refusing to compromise academic standards despite the dramatic decline in performance recorded by candidates in the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
Pro Vice Chancellor, Prof. Gordon Awandare, was emphatic that the mass failure, particularly in Core Mathematics, would not necessitate a reduction in entry requirements.
He explained that the University’s decision is rooted in a fundamental capacity constraint: UG continues to receive far more qualified applicants than it can accommodate, even with the widespread failure.
However, this unyielding stance by Ghana’s premier university puts immediate pressure on thousands of students who couldn’t meet the required grades for tertiary education. Candidates who failed to achieve competitive aggregates must consider re-sitting the WASSCE.
“At the University of Ghana, every year, we have many more students making the cut off but not getting the opportunity to be admitted because of the limited number of spaces.
“So, it is not likely that we will need to move the cut-off to get sufficient numbers for each programme. We will advise that if they really want to come to Legon, they should re-sit some of the papers and improve their aggregates and try again”
Prof. Gordon Awandare, UG Pro Vice Chancellor
He stressed that based on historical data, the university does not anticipate any challenge in filling its academic programmes with deserving candidates, effectively dismissing the need to lower standards to boost intake numbers. Prof. Awandare confirmed that the university has received results from students who purchased awaiting results forms and will proceed to admit the most deserving candidates from that pool.
UG’s commitment to firm cut-offs runs parallel to the Ghana Education Service’s defense that the 2025 outcomes, while poor, reflect a more accurate assessment of students’ abilities due to a strengthened anti-examination-malpractice framework.
Scope of Decline
The university’s firm position highlights the sheer scale of the academic crisis revealed by the 2025 WASSCE statistics. The overall pass rate stood at a sobering 48.73%, meaning more than half of the 461,736 registered candidates failed to achieve the basic requirement for tertiary entrance.
The steepest decline was recorded in Core Mathematics, the subject often considered the primary hurdle for university admission.
Passes (A1-C6) plummeted from 305,132 in 2024 to 209,068 in 2025 – a devastating fall of over 96,000 passes in a single year. Social Studies also saw a low performance rate, with only 55.82% of candidates achieving passes.
According to the numbers, compounding the failure statistics were instances of cheating: 6,295 candidates had their entire results cancelled for bringing unauthorized materials into examination centers, while 1,066 results remain under investigation for various forms of malpractice.
EduWatch Blames Inadequate Preparation
Reacting to the mass failure, the Executive Director of Africa Education Watch (EduWatch), Kofi Asare, attributed the widespread poor performance primarily to the inadequate preparation of the candidates themselves.
Kofi Asare explained that the “nature of WASSCE questions has evolved,” requiring higher-order thinking and practical application of knowledge, moving away from the traditional, rote-learning approach that many students still employ.
He also argued that the intensified anti-malpractice invigilation regime played a significant role in exposing unprepared candidates this year. The clamping down on collusion and examination fraud by WAEC ensured that only those who genuinely studied were able to pass, suggesting that previous years’ results might have been inflated by cheating.
The Eduwatch boss proposed that the GES must respond to the data by “reviewing interventions, increasing contact hours, and further clamping down on collusion to sanitize the system without fear or favour,” providing a long-term roadmap for recovery from the 2025 crisis.
