Arrested BECE supervisors aided in malpractice not leakage - WAEC clarifies

Authorities at the West African Examination Council (WAEC) have disclosed that the circumstances that led to the arrest of some supervisors in the ongoing Basic Examination Certificate Examination (BECE) as an act of examination malpractice and not an examination leakage.

There have been reports that the 2020 BECE is not credible because most of the questions have been leaked to candidates writing the exams.

However, Head of Communications at WAEC, Agnes Tei Cudjoe, in an interview with Starr FM, revealed that the argument of leakages in the BECE does not merit since no authority of WAEC has been identified as giving out questions.

According to her, the actions taken by the supervisors who were arrested are acts of examination malpractice, also known as external assistance. The supervisors, she said, take screenshots of the questions in the examination hall then go out and solve the questions for candidates.

“This is not a leakage of questions. This is what we call helping students to gain external assistance because questions will be taken then answers will be brought to students for them to copy,” Agnes Teye Cudjoe told Starr FM.

She added, “This is an examination malpractice and not an examination leakage. When a candidate brings in a phone into an examination hall it is an examination malpractice.”

She noted that due to the strict protocols guarding examination questions, people have devised ways to get ahead of the examination council.

However, she indicated that assisting candidates to cheat in exams does help students prove themselves.

She said, “This is similar to examination malpractice because this does not allow the students to prove themselves. That is why when we release results, we can say that we have withheld candidate results because we can detect collusion in the scripts of candidates because sometimes when they are copying answers that are brought to them they copy with all errors.”