The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has warned school proprietors and teachers, urging them to separate the “nobility of education” from the pursuit of profit.
Speaking on Starr FM’s Morning Star, the Head of Public Affairs of WAEC, John Kapi attributed the rising trend of examination malpractice to a toxic combination of teacher selfishness, inadequate student preparation, and aggressive institutional marketing.
According to Kapi, many schools now view high pass rates as a commercial billboard noting that the pressure to advertise “100% pass rates” to attract new students often drives proprietors to facilitate cheating rather than investing in quality instruction.
“We haven’t done any scientific study into this. I’ve read a few things around this. First of all, it’s about selfishness on the part of the teachers who are collecting monies from these children to offer them assistance. That is one. Two, I think that they may not have prepared them adequately for the examination, so they feel it would be an indictment on them if these children come out with very bad results. The third is also about marketing the institution. You hear a lot of advertisements that “our children never fail, we registered 100% this year..,” he said.
He however warned that the quest to achieve the recognition should not be at the expense of the nobility of education.
“I shouldn’t cheat my way through just because probably I’m going to get a few more candidates… education should be divorced from profit-making,” Kapi stated.
According to Kapi, some teachers solicit money from candidates under the guise of providing “assistance,” a practice he described as an indictment of their professional ethics.
He further urged parents to understand that the purpose of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) is primarily a selection examination which uses a “stanine” grading system which assesses the entire national cohort to determine which students are most suited for various tracks of higher education at the Senior High School (SHS) level.
He reassured parents and students that all questions are strictly based on the approved syllabus, dismissing concerns that candidates are tested on unfamiliar material.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
