By: Sheku Osman Swaray
It is no secret that the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is an examination board established to determine the examination required in the public interest. WAEC operates in five African countries with the aim of prepare students for advanced (university) studies.
Over the years, the institution has had problems and challenges faced by school authorities and school going pupils in Sierra Leone and this killing the spirit and aspirations of so many young people.
In recent years students often studied very heard with the aim of acquiring good results to go to university but some results may be withheld by WAEC, others get poor grade hence the increase of dropout which leads to many young folks decide not to go school and engaged in drugs taking, stealing and more.
In this year’s WASSCE exams it is reported that about fifty-five thousand (55, 000) children and about two hundred (200) schools were denied/deprived of taking the exams which many have argued that WAEC is undermining one of the government flagship program ‘human capital development).
According to the Ministry of Basic and Senior School Education (MBSSE) has addressed concerns circulating by parents, school going pupils and school authorities regarding the late entry of pupils’ information into the WAEC Portal. It was said that the WAEC Portal was reopened over three times for all schools across the country, and continuous and continuous assessment scores (CASS) at the range of 30% of the total score for candidates taking the WASSCE.
With over 200 schools left out in the 2024 West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and WAEC releasing a notice that the continuous assessment scores entry portal is open from the 25 April to 15 July 2024. The question is doing WAEC have a trained and qualified staff to run the affairs of institution?
Many are of the opinion that for transparency and accountability, the examination body should be informing citizens about the number of school that engaged in an examination malpractice but with the secret operations of the institution educationist say the body isn’t worth the salt to be the only examination body in Sierra Leone, hence the need for government needs to pay attention to WAEC if only the government wants our educational system to be comparative to other African countries.
The need to bring in educational and record experts into the system is very crucial especially people knowledgeable about Information technology to run the data portal.
