The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has dismissed claims that private school candidates were disadvantaged in the marking of scripts of this year's Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
It said it did not discriminate in the marking and that all candidates were treated fairly.
The Head of Public Affairs of WAEC, John Kapi, said in reaction to complaints by the Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNACOPS) and the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) that their candidates were disadvantaged in the marking of this year’s BECE scripts.
“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.
Asked how the marking was done, he explained that examiners were only given centre scripts and that initially the names of the schools were on the script envelope, but over time that system had been changed.
Now, centre numbers were rather on the script envelope, so that when an examiner picked up a “script envelope, they can't even tell what particular school's script is being marked.’’
Mr Kapi said anybody who had any discrepancies as far as their results were concerned should seek redress from WAEC offices.
“We are ready to attend to anybody who so desires,” he told the Daily Graphic in an interview yesterday.
GNACOPS
GNACOPS, in a petition to the Minister of Education, said across the country, private schools had consistently observed significant disparities between the sustained academic performance of many of their candidates, as demonstrated by cumulative school-based assessments, terminal examinations, mock examinations and other documented academic records, and the grades subsequently awarded to those candidates in the BECE.
“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.
The petition, it was accompanied by what the association labelled as “documentary evidence from participating private schools”, including cumulative assessment records, terminal examination results, mock examination results and corresponding BECE results.
The records, it said, were intended to assist in objectively examining the concerns raised and to facilitate an evidence-based review.
“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.
GNAPS
The Greater Accra Regional Chairperson of GNAPS, Dr Aisha Asi Akrofi, told the Daily Graphic that for three years now it has been quite a challenge regarding the BECE results of private school candidates.
For this particular year, she said the schools were thinking that it was because of the change in curriculum, because this time around, there was even a change in the examination questions and that it was more of critical thinking, analysis and creativity, among others.
“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.
Meanwhile, Dr Akrofi said some private school students who were below average or were average students but managed to write with public schools were able to make better grades and even, to a large extent, were able to get Category A schools.
She said reports authorities were receiving showed that “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”.
Responding to the development, education think tank, Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), said such complaints had been brought to its attention almost every year since 2019.
In many countries, it said those who challenged examination results petitioned an independent regulator that oversaw the examining body.
The Executive Director of Eduwatch, Kofi Asare, said in Ghana no such regulator existed.
“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.
He said since 2019, Eduwatch had consistently urged the Ministry of Education to establish such an independent assessment regulator to oversee all 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 reiterated his call on the Minister of Education to establish a regulator for the assessment sector agencies or amend the Education Regulatory Bodies Law and mandate the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) to do that job.
Examiner
An examiner, who has marked BECE for over a decade, corroborated the position of WAEC, adding that the private schools did not have a case.
The examiner said in marking the scripts, it was difficult to separate the private school candidates from those of public schools as the scripts were marked on an examination centre basis.
An examiner in Accra, the source added, could be given examination scripts from a centre A or B 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 most of the time, there was no way an examiner from Accra would mark scripts from the same region (Greater Accra).
“If you are in Accra, there is no way you would mark scripts around Accra,” it said, and that most of the time people from Accra marked scripts from the Northern Region.
The examiner, who had competency in information and communications technology (ICT), said private schools could be worried because they did not know how the marking was done.
The source advised them to rather teach their candidates well and desist from blaming WAEC for the performance of their candidates.
