EduWatch reveals new cheating method in ongoing 2023 WASSCE

Africa Education Watch following the serialization of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination to end questions leakage says teachers have now come up with a new cheating method to discredit the examination.

In a social media post sighted by AcademicWeek, the Director of EduWatch, Kofi Asare said some Senior High School teachers now solve the WASSCE questions, transmit via WhatsApp and pay off external supervisors, so students can cheat.

“Prior to 2022, the business was built around selling solved leaked questions before the exam. After our 2020 and 2021 WASSCE monitoring reports, the Minister of Education intervened in 2022 with the BNI/NBI taking over question security and WAEC serializing questions. Question leakages have since become bad business.

As a result, the criminals now concentrate on supervised cheating in exam centres once question packs are opened, and these criminal teachers solve questions, transmit via WhatsApp and pay off external supervisors, so students can cheat,” he said.

A total of 447,204 prospective candidates, made up of 211,834 males and 235,370 females from 975 Senior High Schools (SHSs) are participating in the Ghana version of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination.

This figure indicates an increase of 5.8% compared to the 2022 entry figure of 422,883. The examination is taking place at 834 centres. A total of 60 subjects, comprising 4 core and 56 electives are made available to candidates to choose from.

The 2023 edition of the WASSCE for School Candidates commenced on Monday, July 31, 2023, with the Visual Art Project work. The question papers for the project work were given to candidates two weeks earlier.

This component of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates will end on Friday, August 18 2023. The examination will continue with the theory papers on Monday, August 21 2023.