The President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Angel Carbonu, has expressed fears that tertiary education institutions in Ghana may soon demand that prospective students write entrance exams before they are admitted.
According to him, this will be the consequence of of the worsening incidents of examination question leakages that have characterized the West African Examination Council’s examinations including the West Africa Senior School Certificate Exams (WASSCE) and the Basic Education Certificate Exams (BECE).
Speaking on Citi Eyewitness News, he said examination leakage “is getting more systemized and complicated” and the examination management body appears to be handicapped in dealing with it decisively.
He said the phenomenon has reduced the value of WAEC certificates hence his fears that the various tertiary institution councils may at some point decide that only students who pass entrance exams will be granted admission.
“[This leakages] put the integrity and the sanctity of certifications in question… When the universities in Ghana begin to question the validity and sanctity of our exam, I will not be surprised that in the near future the various councils of the universities will take a decision where students write entrance exam before they get into the universities,” he said.
Mr. Carbonu suggested that WAEC’s challenge in dealing with the situation may be as a result of the sophistication with which the perpetrators of exam question leakages operate with the help of technology.
“How come that WAEC is being found incapable of finding a solution to this.? Maybe WAEC systems are so weak to the extent that it is unable to identify the problem and solve the problem taking into account the fact that there is a sophisticated technology operating outside WAEC,” he added.
WAEC has come under serious criticism for the past fear years over the leakage of its exam questions ahead of the writing day.
Some groups such as the Africa Education Watch have taken on WAEC over the situation and blamed it for doing very little to tackle the situation, but WAEC has often downplayed such accusations.
Recently, it was forced to reschedule the physics and business management papers over the leakage of the question papers in the ongoing WASSCE.
