WAEC to end registration of unqualified candidates for 2023 BECE

The non-profit-making organization (WAEC) as part of measures to ensure free and fair conduct of its examinations says it has put in place a method to end the registration of unqualified candidates for the Basic Education Certificate Examination.

The move comes after the West African Examinations Council noticed that some parents connive with, mostly public schools to move their wards from private schools to register and write the national examination (BECE) there.

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“Some parents also connive with heads of some public and private schools to get their wards, who are in Junior High School (JHS) one or two registered with the registering school’s final year students,” an Official of WAEC said.

Describing the act as an offence, the Head of National Office (HNO) of WAEC, Wendy Enyonam Addy-Lamptey in an interview with Daily Graphic newspaper said an unqualified candidate when caught can have his results annulled.

“What we will be doing is that we will be picking up data the year before and so, once we pick up the data, we will have all these candidates’ unique numbers and their final year, you can only register them with these unique numbers,” she said.

Asked what measures have been put in place by WAEC to prevent questions leakage, Wendy Enyonam Addy-Lamptey said her outfit would once again introduce the serialisation of question papers, which was introduced last year.

She said with serialisation, the activities of rouge websites, which used to “flood their portals with supposed answers to our objective questions do not come in because they cannot tell which of the versions a candidate is using.”

In a related development, the Ghana Education Service (GES) in a letter to heads of various public and private Junior High Schools has said it is illegal to register unqualified students for the 2023 BECE for School Candidates.

“Management of the Ghana Education Services (GES) wishes to remind all heads of basic schools (private and public) that registration of JHS1 and JHS2 students for BECE for School Candidates is illegal,” the Service said in the letter.

Citing the rules and regulations governing the conduct of the national examination, GES added that “the registration of candidates for the 2023 BECE for School is strictly for students in Junior High School Form three (JHS3) only.”

“It is against the Ghana Education Service (GES) and West African Examinations Council’s (WAEC) rules and regulations to register JHS1 and JHS2 students either in their own school or in a different school to write the BECE,” it noted.