Africa Education Watch, an Education Think Tank, has advised the government to break the monopoly enjoyed by the West African Examination Council, WAEC.
It is the view of the Think Tank that the government must take steps in regulating the powers of the council.
The recommendation forms part of suggestions by the think to the government after it has investigated the conduct of the 2020 WASSCE.
Executive Director of African Education Watch, Kofi Asare, at a ceremony to release the report stated that the probe conducted by them was triggered by the “gravity of malpractices witnessed in the 2020 West African Secondary Schools Examination and the unprecedented leakage of names and contacts of examiners and questions for all but two subjects.”
In his view, independent international examining bodies should be involved in the examination and assessment in the country.
“The Education Ministry must set up a regulator of assessment to regulate WAEC and other assessment bodies before their activities become ungovernable. We need to break the WAEC monopoly. WAEC operates in other countries, but they do not have a monopoly in Nigeria, for instance.”
“There are about six or five internationally reputable assessment bodies in Ghana who have been conducting examination every year and no one hears of any leakages, we need to give them an opportunity to participate in the exam sector, bring in various assessments that they use in assessing so that WAEC will compete and when competition comes in, we believe that WAEC will adopt technologies that will reduce the human involvement or human element which is one of the key reasons why there is leakage.”
“We think that our assessment system needs to be restructured and made credible and accountable, or it will get to a point where our certificates would lose relevance. If we do not prosecute people who engage in such criminal conducts, we will never be sending any signal to the practitioners within the ‘apor’ value chain,” he added.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com
