The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has rejected claims that candidates from private schools were treated unfairly when this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) scripts were marked.
WAEC said candidates were assessed as one group, without distinction between private and public schools, and that the marking process was designed to prevent examiners from identifying the schools whose scripts they were reviewing.
John Kapi, WAEC’s Head of Public Affairs, was responding to concerns raised by the Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNACOPS) and the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS).
“There is no veracity in that assertion; I mean there is no truth in it.
The reason being that we treat all of the candidates we assess as one cohort.
We do not even separate them in terms of classification or anything like that.
They are all put together and examined, and that is how the grading is also done. So there is no way anybody can say, for example, that they are being shortchanged,” he said.
Mr Kapi said examiners were issued scripts according to examination centres rather than school identities. He explained that, while school names had previously appeared on script envelopes, WAEC had since replaced them with centre numbers.
As a result, he said, when an examiner picked up a “script envelope, they can’t even tell what particular school’s script is being marked.’’
He urged candidates, schools and parents who believed there were discrepancies in their results to contact WAEC directly.
“We are ready to attend to anybody who so desires,” he told the Daily Graphic in an interview yesterday.
GNACOPS has petitioned the Minister of Education, arguing that private schools had repeatedly recorded differences between their pupils’ school-based performance and their eventual BECE grades.
The association said the concern was based on cumulative assessments, terminal examinations, mock results and other academic records maintained by schools. It said the pattern had been reported over several years and was not limited to isolated cases.
“These observations are not isolated occurrences but recurring experiences reported by schools over several examination years.
“The persistence of these disparities has generated serious concern throughout the private education sector and has raised an important question of public interest that deserves an independent and authoritative determination,” the petition signed by the Executive Director of GNACOPS, Obenfo Kwasi Gyetuah, said.
GNACOPS said its submission included what it described as documentary evidence from participating private schools. The material included internal assessment records, terminal examination results, mock examination results and the corresponding BECE outcomes.
It asked the Education Minister to set up an independent review committee to investigate whether the examination’s assessment, moderation and marking arrangements provided sufficient safeguards for fairness, consistency and impartiality.
“Accordingly, we respectfully petition the Minister of Education to establish an Independent Review Committee to examine this matter and determine whether the existing assessment, moderation and marking processes employed in the administration of the Basic Education Certificate Examination provide adequate safeguards to guarantee fairness, consistency, impartiality and equal treatment for candidates from private schools,” the petition read.
Dr Aisha Asi Akrofi, the Greater Accra Regional Chairperson of GNAPS, said private schools had experienced difficulties with BECE results for three consecutive years.
She said schools had initially considered whether this year’s results were linked to changes in the curriculum and examination questions, which placed greater emphasis on critical thinking, analysis and creativity.
However, she said complaints from parents and reports received by schools suggested that many candidates had performed below expectations, particularly those regarded by their schools as the strongest pupils.
“But then, for this particular year, the agitation coming from our parents and the reports we are receiving indicate that the results of these children aren’t anything to write home about, especially when schools believe that their best children are supposed to produce a certain kind of result, good grades, and it’s not happening,” she said.
Dr Akrofi added that some pupils who were considered average or below average in private schools had achieved stronger grades after sitting the examination alongside public-school candidates. Some, she said, had gained admission to Category A schools.
She said the information received by GNAPS showed “there’s so much disparity between their continuous assessment reports within the schools, their mock examination, their attendance reports, vis-a-vis, the BECE results that are coming eventually”.
Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) said similar complaints had been brought to its attention almost every year since 2019.
Its Executive Director, Kofi Asare, said that in several countries candidates challenging examination results could appeal to an independent regulator overseeing the examining body. Ghana, he said, had no equivalent regulator.
“WAEC examines, receives complaints about its own decisions, investigates those complaints, and pronounces on them.
“While there may be no evidence that WAEC has acted improperly or with bias, this is inconsistent with modern principles of accountability and independent oversight,” Mr Asare emphasised.
Eduwatch has repeatedly called since 2019 for the Ministry of Education to establish an independent assessment regulator covering examining and assessment bodies, including WAEC.
“Examination credibility does not depend only on accurate marking.
The existence of independent, transparent and trusted appeals processes is key,” he insisted.
Mr Asare also urged the Education Minister either to create a regulator for assessment-sector agencies or amend the Education Regulatory Bodies Law to give the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) that responsibility.
An examiner with more than a decade of experience marking BECE scripts supported WAEC’s explanation and said private schools had no basis for claiming discrimination.
The examiner said scripts were allocated by examination centre, making it difficult to distinguish private-school candidates from those attending public schools. An examiner in Accra, for example, could be given scripts from a centre in Kumasi.
“They don’t separate the private schools from the government ones,” it said, and that “there is no discrimination at all between the private and public schools,” he added.
The examiner said markers were generally not assigned scripts from their own areas. Someone based in Accra, for instance, would not normally mark scripts from the Greater Accra area and could instead receive scripts from the Northern Region.
The examiner, who had expertise in information and communications technology (ICT), said private schools might be concerned because they were unfamiliar with the marking arrangements. The source advised them to focus on preparing candidates effectively rather than blaming WAEC for their results.
