By: Precious Miracle Kargbo (Intern)
The Minister of Basic Senior and Secondary Education (MBSSE), Conrad Sackey has officially announced the release of the 2023 West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) with a very huge pass rate and 34,525 results withheld that has never been recorded by the Ministry.
The Minister, Conrad Sackey made this statement during an interview at the SLBC Corporation on the 2nd October 2023.
To start with, he highlighted that the results for the 2023 May/June WASSCE for school candidates was released to the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) on Friday 29 September 2023. 191,077 candidates on the list released to the MBSSE sat for at least one subject or paper. 33,238 were without results as the results have been withheld while another 6,658 had new results as they were absent from all subjects.
He also furthers that 243,202 candidates from 888 schools in Sierra Leone entered for the May-June exams in 2023, with the results for 28 private schools that are not on the WAEC list sent to the MBSSE which contains just 230,973 names from 860 schools.
Sackey gladly expressed satisfaction in this year’s WASSCE result which he said records a total of 1,630,980 subject papers which were sat by the 191,077 candidates that sat at least 1 subject. 1,346,855 pass, and recorded a pass rate of 83%. “Given that the pass rates in 2021 and 2022 were 64% and 77%, this year’s pass rate is the highest ever”, he intimated.
Following the excellent performance from this year’s examination, the Minister identifies two students a boy and a girl who are both from the same school with their names as Raymonda E. Mammah and Sahr Edward Fillie, from the Providence International Senior High School who sat to 9 subjects and obtained 8 A1s (excellent) and 1 B2 (very good).
Their average grade/unit was 1.11 (excellent). 16 of the candidates with released results in 2023 have better average grades than the best average grade obtained in 2022, Minister Sackey mentioned. Also, he congratulated the best performing school, Providence International Senior High School, which had the results for 185 of its candidates released and 185 candidates (100%) obtained a credit or better in a minimum of 5 subjects including English Language and Mathematics i.e.in which they all obtained the requirements for direct entry to a university undergraduate degree programme.
Furthermore, the Minister affirms that the candidate entry for 2023 is the highest ever recorded at 243,202. The entry was even higher than the 163,860 entries for the 2003 NPSE and the 206,874 entries for the 2022 WASSCE. With the representation of girls at the apex, he said “Of the 230,973 candidates on the results received by the MBSEE, 121,324 were female and 109,649 were male i.e. 52.5% were female, this continues the trend of more female than male candidate entries for WASSCE. Of the 191,077 candidates that sat at least one subject and whose results have been released, 101,222 (53%) were female and 89,855 were male, again this is a continuation of the trend of more female than male candidates actually sitting WASSCE”.
Moreover, the Minister said there are variations in performance across subjects but overall performance in different subjects is much better in 2023 than in 2022, he mentioned that in all the key subjects there are significant improvements in the number and percentage of candidates in the A1 to C4 range.
The MBSSE is studying the grade distribution for all subjects closely and will engage WAEC in discussions as necessary. He went further by stating that district performance is better in 2023 than in 2022, with the average grade for all districts being in the range of 5 to 6 i.e. credit grade range.
The best performing district had 79.4% of its candidates, whose results have been released, with credits or better in 5 or more subjects including English Language and/or Mathematics. 11 out of the 16 districts had over 90% of their candidates, whose results have been released, with a minimum of 3 credits in subjects sat.
Conclusively, Honorable Minister Conrad Sackie reiterates that the MBSSE is aware of concerns about the integrity of examinations and they are working effortlessly with WAEC and other agencies to eradicate examination malpractices in Sierra Leone.
In this regard, the public will be informed of actions taken against individuals and entities found to have been involved in malpractices in the 2023 WASSCE. At the same time, WAEC has already proactively withheld 34,525 results whilst investigations are going on. He confirmed at the same time, that the total of 34,525 results withheld is the highest ever. This demonstrates the continuing efforts of MBSSE and WAEC to eradicate examination malpractices.
