So what score fetches a BECE candidate grade one?

Prior to the release of the 2020 BECE results, a document was going round purported to have originated from WAEC. That document gave an outline of range of scores and the corresponding grades.

On that document, grade one's score range was given as 90-100, grade 2 was 80-89, grade 3 was 70-79, grade 4 was 65-69 and so on.

Even though that document turned out to be fake, very highly placed people in the society, including some teachers, believed it to be authentic. Most students also believed it.

I personally knew from the onset that it was fake. I checked, rechecked, and cross-checked and did not find it in any official portal of WAEC, neither was it in any official WAEC document.

Apart from that, the face value of the document betrayed its fakeness. If it were true it means that any candidate who has grade one in all the four core subjects; English Language, Mathematics, Integrated Science and Social Studies, must have a total score of at least 360 (i.e. 90*4).

But upon the release of the school placement and its accompanying total scores, there are some candidates who had grade one in all the four core subjects but whose total scores are way below 360. My own child had grade one in all the four core subjects yet his total score was 325.

The truth is some bloggers deliberately threw this fake document out there hoping to force WAEC to come out with the right one. But WAEC did not fall for it.

So the situation remains that if your ward gets grade one or two in a particular subject you don't have any idea as to what score he had that fetched him that grade.

I have always wished that WAEC would make this information on grades and the corresponding range of scores available to the general public to end the confusion and the speculation.