Ongoing 2023 WASSCE - Danger looms at Kadjebi Asato SHS

KWAMI ALORVI WRITES: ONGOING 2023 WASSCE – DANGER LOOMS AT KADJEBI ASATO SHS

1 Introduction
In our article titled “THE WASSCE EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE PANDEMIC – HOW DID WE GET THERE?” dated 13th September, 2023, we flagged some new hotspots of the examination malpractices. Among the schools flagged were *Kadjebi Asato SHS and Baglo SHTS in Oti Region, Islamic SHS in Ashanti Region, Pentecost SHS in Eastern Region, and five others in Bono Region.
We monitored the conduct of the examinations in a couple of these schools in addition to one other school in the Central Region. It is amazing to note how WAEC could have effectively monitored the examinations had it been adequately resourced.
This article details the fall-outs of the WAEC monitoring in the Kadjebi Asato Senior High School and the danger that looms ahead if care is not taken.

2. Kadjebi Asato Senior High School
Soon after the Mathematics Core paper on Thursday 14th September, 2023, we picked an Intel that some of the students in the school were unhappy about how their teachers discriminated against them in the assistance offered during the paper. Our team thus connected with some students both in town and on campus to find out their concerns. What we gathered included the following:

i) The candidates, according to the students, were over 1,140, so the examinations were conducted in the school’s assembly hall and about twenty-five classrooms.
ii) There were two officials on monitoring duty; one from the Oti Regional Education office of the GES and the other, a WAEC official.
iii) Try as the two officials did, the mere number of the over twenty classrooms used as examination halls, in addition to the assembly hall, were too much for them to control. Attention was thus focused more on the assembly hall, where most of the candidates were put in one location.
iv) Three workers of the school – the school administrator, the driver, and a storekeeper – were reportedly deployed to smuggle to the examination halls at the classroom side, mobile phones, and worked-out solutions to the questions at the blind sides of the two monitoring officials.
v) The students also alleged that their Mathematics teachers had unfettered access to the examination halls and assisted those who wrote the papers in the classrooms. Those of them in the assembly hall, they said, received less attention due to the almost permanent presence of one of the monitoring officials.
vi) Those students in the assembly hall could not benefit so much from the assistance offered to their colleagues who wrote the papers in the classrooms.
vii) Among the students who wrote the Mathematics paper in the assembly hall, according to the aggrieved students, were their Senior Prefect and Girls Prefect (names withheld).
viii) The aggrieved students complained that when the bell was rung for the end of the paper, their scripts were collected from them. However, when the two monitoring officials left the assembly hall, some of their colleagues, including the Senior Prefect and Girls Prefect, were locked inside the school Counseller’s office located within the assembly hall and offered the worked out answers to the Mathematics questions to copy. This was to compensate the two prefects for not getting the level of assistance offered to their colleagues in the classrooms due to the presence of the monitoring officials in the assembly hall.
Our team probed the students further to ascertain whether the Senior Prefect and Girls Prefect could not answer the questions at all before the end of the paper or they cancelled the wrong answers they had written before copying the worked out answers given to them. They had no clue to our question.

3. Payment of Fifty Cedis (Ghc50.00) Invigilation Levy
The aggrieved students told our team that their teachers had asked the over 1,140 candidates to pay fifty Cedis (Ghc50) for the assistance offered them in the Mathematics paper. However, those of them who were discriminated against had decided not to pay. As a result, the teachers had restyled the levy as cost of clearance form, which each student must pay before the clearance forms are even issued to them. This means the teachers would not clear students who fail to pay for the forms before they depart after the WASSCE.

4. Looming Danger
Our team has observed that this position of the teachers against the resistance of a sizeable number of the SHS3 candidates poses a potential threat to peace and security in Kadjebi Asato SHS. The resistance by students to this clearance form levy can lead to riots and the destruction of school property should the teachers insist on collecting the Ghc50 levy.
We are by this article notifying the Headmaster of the school, the Ghana Education Service both at Headquarters and the Oti Regional office, to act speedily and avert any danger. The threat, according to our Intel, is real.

5. Need to Strengthen Monitoring
From our analysis of the situation in Kadjebi Asato SHS, two officials monitoring the examinations in the large assembly hall and about twenty-five classrooms for each core subject paper is just woefully inadequate. WAEC, therefore, needs to find ways to augment the number for effective monitoring of the Integrated Science paper to limit the malpractice.

6. Enyan Maim Community SHS
Our team would like to commend WAEC for the measures taken to curtail the malpractices after our report of Sunday, 10th September, 2023, titled “WAEC, WHY HAVE THE EXAMINATION MALPRACTICES IN ENYAN MAIM COMMUNITY SHS NOT SHOWED UP ON YOUR RADAR.”
Though things have improved due to the monitoring put in place, our team can report that the absence of any WAEC official during the Mathematics objective test paper on Thursday 14th September 2023 provided a conducive atmosphere for cheating. The presence of the official during the written paper curtailed the malpractice.

7. Conclusion
On the whole, our team would like to commend WAEC for the measures they have taken on our reports. The constraint is the limited number of officials on the grounds to do the monitoring. We believe that if the government has provided adequate funding and in a timeous manner, WAEC would have performed marvellously. The government should empower WAEC by releasing sufficient funds to it and on time for the engagement of more staff to monitor the examinations. Funds should also be released on time to pay teachers who invigilate the examinations and examiners who mark the scripts.
The perennial problem of inadequate and delayed release of funds to WAEC, and delayed payment of the meagre allowances of the invigilators and examiners many months (sometimes over one year) after performing their duties is one cause of the examination malpractices.

Dated: Sunday, 17th September, 2023

Source: Today.com.gh