Private schools to boycott WAEC and set up its own exams council

Citing discrimination against private school students in BECE, the Private Education Coalition (PEC) has threatened to withdraw from partaking in the national examination conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).

The Education Coalition’s decision to establish its examination board comes after they requested an independent probe into the marking of the 2021 Basic Education Certificate Examination scripts of private school students.

“If the Government’s priority is on public schools, then the private sector ought to be able to be self-governing (including setting up its own examinations board) and moving students into private Senior High Schools,” PEC stated.

Speaking on the issue on the Citi Breakfast show monitored by AcademicWeek, the Director of Ghana National Council of Private Schools, Enoch Gyetuah said he believes WAEC deliberately marked down the BECE scripts of private schools.

The rigid marking, the Private Schools Council Director alleged was to enable candidates from public Junior High Schools (JHS) who participated in the 2021 BECE to perform much better than their colleagues from the private sector.

“Most of the private school students have been marked down, and we are calling for re-marking and even calling for an independent body to go into that. There’s even discrimination in the aspect of the school placement,” he told Citi.

But, the management of the not-for-profit-making organization (WAEC) reacting to the claim by Mr Enoch Kwasi Gyetuah has said the allegations that private schools’ BECE scripts were marked down are baseless and false.

Madam Agnes Teye Cudjoe, a spokeswoman for the West African Examinations Council speaking on Accra-based Citi FM’s Eyewitness News show said the wild allegations raised by Mr Enoch Kwasi Gyetuah lack evidence and proof.

“I am a bit surprised by the allegations by GNACOPS because the BECE scripts of public or private schools are not marked differently. We do not have different index numbers for private schools and public schools,” Mrs Agnes stated.

Explaining the process of the national examination papers marking, Mrs Cudjoe told the host of Eyewitness News, Umaru Sanda Amadu the BECE scripts only have candidates’ names and index numbers and not their school names.

“We have over 10,000 WAEC examiners who mark the BECE School scripts so how do you get these examiners together and tell them that these are the list of private schools marked down differently from public Junior High Schools

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is a credible institution and I don’t think we will go that mile to mark private schools’ BECE papers down,” the not-for-profit Council’s spokesperson told Umaru Sanda Amadu.