2025 WASSCE: Let’s avoid political commentary and focus on solutions – Anti Partey

Executive Director of the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST), Dr Peter Anti Partey, has urged education authorities to adopt a more targeted, school-level approach in responding to the sharp decline in the 2025 WASSCE performance.

Speaking on Morning Starr with Naa Dedei Tettey on Monday, December 1, 2025, Dr Partey cautioned that Ghana’s public debate on the results risks being driven by broad generalisations rather than evidence.

He explained that focusing solely on national averages masks the real problem—wide disparities in school performance.

“The national averages… are just an aggregation of individual school performances. If some people perform poorly, they drive the overall average down.”

Dr Partey stressed that meaningful improvement will only come from identifying and supporting the specific schools dragging down national outcomes, not from political commentary.

“If we leave it to the politicians, I don’t think those kinds of decisions would help my child or help your child… Our individual kids… will not benefit from that discussion.”

His remarks follow the release of the 2025 WASSCE results, which showed that more than 200,000 candidates failed Mathematics, with only 48.73% passing. Social Studies also recorded a drop, with 55.82% of candidates obtaining passes—a trend many stakeholders have described as one of the lowest in recent years.

Meanwhile, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has defended the results, insisting they represent a more accurate reflection of students’ performance due to tightened anti-malpractice measures rather than failures in teaching or school supervision.