The West Africa Examination Council, WAEC in Ghana has begun consultation with other member states for the way forward for this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE.
Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic the West African Examination Council, WAEC has suspended all its examinations.
Some member states like Ghana has started easing their restriction to allow final year students to write their exit exams.
Head of Public Affairs for WAEC Agnes Cudjoe said they are in talks with other member states to see if they will also join the examination.
According to her Ghana may be the only country to write if other countries do not agree to the easing of their restrictions.
“WAEC will be conducting exams for candidates who will be taking the WASSCE and BECE. As at now, we are still in talks as to whether any of the member countries will join if they do fine and if they don’t Ghana will go-ahead to conduct the exams.”
She explained that there is no issue with the BECE because it’s a national examination.
“The BECE is a national exam so we don’t have any problem with that one is a Ghana only exam so we have to really talk with any other member country for that. The timetable is still at the preparation stage and we will inform people accordingly when it is ready as early as possible”
Government has indicated that final year Senior High School, SHS students in Ghana will this year write the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE without their colleagues from other West African countries.
The Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah speaking on government’s decision to ease the restriction for the final year students in the country to go back to school said the Ghanaian students will write the examinations alone.
“WAEC has already signalled that the general exam has been suspended, countries that can put in place interim measures will be given support to take off their examinations. We believe that we are able to get to a point that we can do this for our final year students.”
“Our expectation at this stage is that ours will be on a stand-alone matter while for the other countries they proceed to attend to them as and when they are ready to do something similar. If you had only Final year students going into these institutions you have a lot of space that you can socially distance and that is how come even class prescription numbers have been arrived at…”
