By: Ilyasa Baa
The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has said the Conference of Principals for Secondary Schools (CPSS) has a role to play to curb the high spate of examination malpractice in the country.
According to the Public Affairs Officer of WAEC, Salieu Kamara, exams malpractice starts from the registration process right down to the halls. He said stakeholders such as CPSS need to play their role accordingly and make it easy for WAEC officials to do the monitoring.
“The Principals make our monitoring work difficult by way of creating diverse halls instead of a big hall which can accommodate over 250 candidates”, he said, adding that they cannot be in all the halls at the same time. He said they do not withhold results unnecessarily noting that their action of seizing results is based on concrete evidences of widespread malpractices.
The Public Relations Officer of the CPSS, Abdul Razack has described the said recent reports of exam malpractice as unfortunate. He said CPSS does the allocation of Principals and teachers to invigilate the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) whiles furthering that those caught by the Anti -Corruption Commission’s Scorpion Squad should have themselves to blame.
He said in the planning stage, CPSS, ACC and other stakeholders sat on the table regarding the monitoring of the exams. He noted that the proliferation of schools in the country is a factor leading to the high spate of exams malpractice.
Historian and writer, Joe A.D. Alie has also added his voice in condemning the high level of exam malpractice in recent times. He said what we are experiencing now had been with us since the 1970s. He noted that there are people in the education sector who do not have the country at heart but use exam malpractice to enrich themselves. He expressed his dissatisfaction over the proliferation of what he referred to as mushroom schools and called on candidates to study hard to pass their exams.
