BECE examination malpractices: Is there an end in sight?
Just a couple of weeks ago, candidates of the 2026 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) prayed for their successes as they began to write the exam.
Schools and teachers said special prayers and so did parents and even some churches as 509,862 candidates across the country buckled up to write their first major examination that would decide their next level of education.
Our information is that out of the total number, 225,274 were boys, while 284,588 were girls.
One is learning that these figures show an overall increase of 10.4 per cent over the 2025 figures.
Regrettably, for over a decade and a half or so since this competitive examination for basic education students, there seems to have been one controversy or another, with examination malpractices strongly coming up each year.
Such misconducts were quite rampant in the early stages with candidates.Of recent times ,however, the principal actors have shifted to teachers, invigilators and other officials.
Each time examination malpractices happen, the West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC) and the Ghana Education Service (GES), go through specific actions of deterrent to ensure that there would not be recurrences in ensuing years.
We have seen punitive measures including cancellation of papers, sometimes a whole school’s results or even prosecutions of identified culprits.
Unfortunately, technology seems to be ahead of it all and the misdemeanours get the upper hand with mobile phone technologies, ChatGTP and Artificial Intelligence (AI) overtaking efforts to maintain sanity and order.
Examination malpractices
Last year, the basic examination malpractices escalated across the country with widespread outcries from the general public. Some even called for the prosecution of invigilators and teachers who were found culpable.
The GES quickly responded and moved many steps with warnings and even prosecutions of invigilators and teachers who were liable. Unfortunately, the measures the service put in place as forms of punishment have not seemed to be deterrent enough.
It is shocking to know that the just ended 2026 BECE has presented even more malpractices across the country.
It seems like as our world gets even more sophisticated with technology, the miscreants move many steps ahead.
According to a Graphic online publication on May 13, as many as 44 teachers, invigilators and supervisors have been intercepted in connection with examination violations at the just ended BECE, across the country
The infractions have been confirmed by the Public Affairs Officer of WAEC in an interview with a reporter from the Graphic online.
As per his admission, almost all of the cases were mobile phone related.
Those officials caught in the wrong doings were either using mobile phones to take photos of the examination questions to be solved or securing exam question answers using ChatGTP.
It is gratifying to note that there have been swift actions taken by authorities on the 44 caught in the cheating that went on across the country.
The Graphic online report indicated that those arrested were from seven regions, with the Ashanti Region topping the list 17 cases, followed by the Western Region with nine cases, Greater Accra Region had six cases, while the Central and Eastern regions had five and four respectively.
The Bono Region had two, while Bono East had one case.
Action has already commenced in one case at Twifo Praso in the Central Region where four teachers are reported to have been convicted and fined GHc3,000 each following their admission of guilt when they were arraigned before the Twifo Praso District Magistrate Court. If they failed to pay the fines, they will spend one year in jail.
Ethics
The GES and WAEC have moved many steps, year after year to bring ethical practices and normalcy into the whole conduct of examination supervision but it seems none of their measures are deterrent enough.
If they were, the number of those officials who engaged in the malpractices would not have risen from the 35 of the previous year, as confirmed by the director general of the GES to the 44 cases this year.
As a country, it should be worrying to us that there seems to be no end to these examination misdemeanours despite the education, warnings, prosecutions and other punishments being meted out.
Are those officials engaged in such professional misconducts see no wrong and hear no wrong in what they are doing?
They are compromising their own integrity; they are inculcating in the children wrongful acts of cheating their way to the top and sowing seeds to corruption.
What future would the children who are being introduced to cheating in examinations have as responsible public servants, entrepreneurs, leaders, wives, husbands and parents?
Perhaps, we have come to the stage where names must be called out, followed by dismissals from any public service and working with children.
Once they are caught, the noble professions they have nurtured for themselves become non- essential to them anymore.
But above all, the question that needs to be asked is whether, for all that has gone on and is still going on, we need BECE at all?
Why can we not use continuous assessment to evaluate and place students in senior high schools?
We need to help preserve our children's morality at all levels of the educational ladder and not give room for sowing seeds of corruption and cheating at such an early age.
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