Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Education Committee, Dr Clement Apaak, has disclosed that the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) cannot exonerate itself from the examination leakages which happened in the 2021 WASSCE examination.
According to him, the extent to which examination leakages occur in the country is getting worse and when issues related to the problem are raised, the Council blames education think tank, Africa Education Watch for baring the issues instead of taking responsibility.
Following a report issued by Eduwatch which revealed that over 11 papers leaked with officials of the Council being involved in the leakages, WAEC denied leakages of some papers in a press briefing steered by the Public Affairs Director of the Council, Agnes Teye Cudjoe.
“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 Clement Apaak
Dr Apaak disclosed that, it is because of reasons like this the Minority in Parliament is calling for a bipartisan probe into irregularities and leakages of questions in examinations conducted by the Council. He insisted that 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”.
Dr Clement Apaak
Bi-partisan probe in examination leakage
The Minority in Parliament has filed a private members’ motion for the House to set up a bi-partisan committee to probe alleged irregularities and leakages of exams conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in the last 10 years.
The minority insisted that issues of leakages and misconduct during WAEC examinations have heightened over the years and this calls for investigations into the matter.
Speaking on the issue, the Deputy Ranking on the education committee, Dr Clement Apaak revealed that parliament via the investigation can establish the source of leakages and offer solutions to rid the educational system of such malpractices.
He noted that the level of leakages and malpractices have reached a stage where if actions are not taken, “we will be graduating to a level” where WAEC issued certificates will lose their value, not only in Ghana.
Dr Apaak revealed that despite the involvement of the CID and police investigation into the matter, they cannot be entirely independent. This, he explained, was because some personnel are made to escort the papers from WAEC’s strongroom, where papers are kept, to the centres.
“We [minority] don’t want to be seen as being partisan or petty, that is why we have given a wide range from 2011 to 2021. What we need to do is to look at the causal factors over time. We need to know how the papers leak and who are the beneficiaries of the leakages?”
Dr Clement Apaak
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