Strengthen external security to curtail exam fraud - Eduwatch

EDUWATCH, has welcomed the collaboration between the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) and the West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC), facilitated by the Ministry of Education (MoE), which has enhanced the security of the 2023 West Africa Senior Secondary School Examination (WASSCE) questions significantly.

In its 2023 WASSCE statement, EDUWATCH, however, indicated some security breaches leading to the circulation of questions for “Social Studies 1, Biology 2 and Further (Elective)Mathematics 2 papers on social media about 45 minutes ahead of the scheduled time for the examinations”.

Despite appreciating the swift investigations which led to the arrest of the culprits, EDUWATCH wants an “expedited prosecution with outcomes made public”.

It welcomed the arrest of people arrested by “WAEC and security agencies for alleged collusion with candidates to cheat at some examination centres,” and noted: “a successful prosecution and publishing of outcomes is critical to building public and stakeholder confidence in the fight against examination malpractice and fraud”.

The Education Policy Research Advocacy Organisation also noticed an escalation in examinations centre fraud revealing that: “Due to the enhanced questions security, the strategy of cheating networks has intensified at the examination centres, especially where external supervisors are absent.

“Questions were solved by some recalcitrant teachers and transmitted via WhatsApp platforms to candidates at some centres. Other schools had answers written on boards for students to copy, with students paying as much as GHS 1,000.”

According to EDUWATCH, while this is not new, the escalation “requires a renewed response by strengthening examination centre external security”.

It revealed that WAEC by 2022, “had the capacity to deploy its own external supervisors to only 20 per cent of WASSCE Centres at a given time, reiterating that in its 2021 and 2022 WASSCE monitoring reports, it had indicated that “the use of Ghana Education Service (GES) staff as supervisors is a major flaw in the security arrangement of WASSCE”.

This EDUWATCH explains it is because “many of them have vested interests in the outcome of the examinations and are potentially in Conflict-of-Interest. The number of GES staff arrested over the years for colluding with candidates to cheat affirms this position”.

It, therefore, suggested that the Ministry of Education “resource WAEC to recruit adequate Non-GES External Supervisors at every centre during every paper”.