Leakages of West African Examination Council Questions, Worrying

The Ghana Psychological Association (GPA) expresses its disquiet and worry about the consistent leakages of the West African Senior Secondary School/ Basic Education Certificate Examination questions from the West African Examination Council in recent years. Education is an important process that promotes the development of societies, and as such, its integrity has to be safeguarded at all times. This is because if the integrity of our examinations is compromised, it is more likely to cause damage to our school system, and further undermines the developmental efforts of the nation.

Every nation needs well developed minds in order to be guaranteed of sustained, enduring and progressive development, therefore, as our governments and other stakeholders are putting in the needed efforts to foster educational success, it behooves all bodies that have been mandated to conduct examinations in the country to ensure the sanctity of the assessment process. Sadly, the integrity of the West African Examination Council—the body mandated to organize basic and secondary schools examination in the sub-region has been dented, and this does not bode well for the development of education in the country.

Apart from the leakages compromising the integrity of our school system, and endangering our socio-economic prospects, it also brings along psychosocial effects on the students and their parents. The obvious danger is that if these leakages are not checked, and nib in the bud, it is likely going to create the situation where students are not going to take their studies serious because of the consciousness of getting access to leaked questions. Again, when examination questions are cancelled in the midst of the examinations, it is likely going to make some students overly anxious, stressful, depressed, and fearful—all of which can result in poor performance in subsequent subjects to be taken.

As a result of the psychosocial effects of the examination leakages on the various stakeholders in the educational enterprise, especially the students, the GPA would like to impress upon the WAEC to put in place far-reaching interventions to protect their questions from leaking into the public domain. This means that they should put in place security measures that are tight, and can easily trace the source of any leakage. Finally, punitive measures should be put in place and enforced to deter others from engaging in this disgraceful act.

Signed

Dr. Kingsley Nyarko

Public Relations Officer (GPA)

Contact information:

Phone: 0548006675, 0244982242, 0204277585

Email: ghanapsychassoc@gmail.com