The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has rejected allegations that candidates from private schools were disadvantaged in the marking of the 2026 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
The council said candidates from private and public schools were assessed under the same conditions, with their examination scripts marked according to a single standard marking scheme.
John Kapi, WAEC’s Head of Public Affairs, was responding to concerns raised by the Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNACOPS), which claimed that some private school candidates had been unfairly affected by this year’s BECE results.
Mr Kapi said WAEC did not separate candidates according to the type of school they attended when assessing their performance.
“We do not make a distinction between private schools and public schools when it comes to assessment because all of them are supposed to have studied under the same syllabus, written the same standard examination, and all of them have had their scripts marked using the same standard marking scheme,” Mr Kapi said in an interview with Joy News.
He said the marking process was structured in a way that prevented examiners from knowing whether an individual script had come from a private or public school.
“Even for the examiners who are marking the scripts, they can’t tell which one is a private school and which one is a public school,” he added.
According to Mr Kapi, this anonymity helps support what WAEC described as a fair and transparent assessment process. Since examiners cannot identify the school background of candidates from the scripts they mark, the council maintains that private school candidates are not assessed differently from those in public schools.
The response came after GNACOPS alleged that some candidates attending private schools had been disadvantaged in the results released for the 2026 BECE.
WAEC said it remained willing to consider complaints from schools and candidates who believed their results did not accurately represent how they performed in the examination.
Mr Kapi urged anyone with concerns to present them directly to the council so they could be considered.
“If they have concerns, they should come to us. We are ready to listen to them and address those concerns,” he stated.
He also responded to claims that some students had received results in subjects they had not taken. Mr Kapi described those allegations as “strange”, but said WAEC would need precise information before it could examine the cases.
The council’s position is that any investigation into an individual result or subject entry would require specific details from the school or candidate involved. It has therefore asked those raising concerns about the BECE results to bring their complaints to WAEC for review.
WAEC’s rejection of the allegations centres on its claim that all candidates sat the same standard examination, followed the same syllabus and had their scripts assessed using the same marking scheme, regardless of whether they attended a private or public school.
