Ahead of the start of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) on Monday, June 5, the West African Examination Council (WAEC), is assuring of tight security measures to curb any leaks and minimize examination malpractices.
Over 400,000 candidates from over 15,000 public and private schools will sit for the exam at 1,702 centres across the country. The week-long exam is expected to end on Friday, June 9, 2016.
[contextly_sidebar id=”ivgXnpqBLZrClpeL7LYchIOZC4oKeX6Q”]Agnes Tei Cudjoe, the Head of Public Relations at WAEC, said “we’ve put in place a number of additional security measures to what we did last year which we want to keep to ourselves because we don’t like disclosing the things that we do in terms of security to the public.”
However, merging examination centres, as some have called for, is not part of these measures, according to Mrs. Cudjoe.
“Merging centres will not make supervision any stronger. It is when you even have supervisors with a limited number of candidates that they are able to monitor them closely,” she explained.
Personnel will be key to minimizing malpractices, and Mrs. Cudjoe urged them to work to the standards required of them.
“We will also use other personnel to assist us in the conduct of the exams, so we would like to appeal to all these other people we are using to also do their bit and do what is expected of them, so we ensure that the supervision and invigilation go on well at the various examination centres, so we do not have cases of malpractices at the centres.”
The 2016 BECE passed without any reports of leaked examination papers following tightening of security and the subsequent decision to fly question papers to examination centres.
WAEC, however at a time, withheld the results of some students in 321 schools for engaging in examination irregularities.
WAEC statistics indicate that, with a total score of 600 being the maximum raw score in six subjects, 3,994 candidates got more than 500 in the 2016 BECE.
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana