By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Conrad Sackey, has urged schools to comply with the registration process the West African Examination Council – WAEC has laid out. Minister Sackey was speaking during the weekly government press briefing Tuesday, 4 February 2025.
While outlining the process of registering students for the WASSCE exams, the minister said schools have to input CAS 1 and CAS 2 (Continuous Assessment Scores) for their students, and then go on to the third stage, which is Batch Registration.
‘‘Only 32 percent of schools have completed that Batch Registration and our deadline at the Ministry is Friday,’’ he said.
Minister Sackey did not only urge schools but also parents and school authorities to take interest and put the necessary pressure on school principals. ‘‘We don’t want our kids to be left behind. I want parents to go and pressure their school leaders. I am appealing to school boards, MPs and parents to hold their school leaders to account,’’ he said.
According to data from the Ministry, 163,797 candidates are expected to write the exams from 892 schools this year. From the 892 schools, 12 schools are yet to submit their CAS. ‘‘Four of the twelve schools are government schools; four are private schools and we don’t have any record for the other four schools,’’ he said.
Sackey said they have offered technical assistance to schools just to smoothen the process. He announced sanctions for defaulting schools: ‘‘the principals of those schools will be suspended for 6 months without salary. There must be accountability,’’ he added.
He said names of defaulting schools would be published in due time, while government tries to strengthen the system and make sure all children that are eligible to write the WASSCE exams are registered to do so.
