WAEC opens investigations into leaked 2020 WASSCE questions

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has opened investigations into the leakage of a list containing details of examiners for the ongoing West African Secondary School Certificate Examination.

Though the examination body confirmed the credibility of the list circulating on social media, it said in a press release Wednesday, August 19, 2020, that it is “a yet to be finalized version” of an examiners’ list.

“The Council has initiated investigations into this disturbing development and reported the matter to the Cyber Crime Department of the Ghana Police Service.”

The Council however assured stakeholders and members of the public that its marking process, which it said has been tested over the years ensures fairness.

According to WAEC, this process involves:

- Exclusion of school names on script envelopes;

- Swapping of scripts across regions;

- Vetting of scripts marked by Assistant Examiners by Team Leaders; Vetting of Team Leaders’ scripts by Chief Examiners;

- Cross-checking of all marked scripts (Script-checking process);

- Supervision of above-mentioned processes by Venue Co-ordinators and Subject

“While apologising unreservedly to all Examiners whose contact details were inadvertently circulated in the public domain, the Council wishes to reiterate its commitment to safeguarding the integrity and credibility of its examinations and certificates respectively," WAEC said in the release.

Also, WAEC says its monitoring of the ongoing WASSCE has uncovered the activities of rogue websites with several fake versions of questions being circulated on social media platforms.

It mentioned fake question papers including Integrated Science (2&1), Social Studies (2&1), Chemistry (3) Practical Alternative A, and Economics (2 & 1) papers shared on social media platforms.

“Snapshots of the Mathematics (Core) 2 Paper were posted on social media platforms after the release of the paper from WAEC Strong Rooms. Investigations into this issue are ongoing.

“Meanwhile, the Council will continue to roll out various measures to deal with these illegal activities in order to ensure fairness to all candidates and maintain the integrity of the examination,” the statement said.