Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram Samuel Nartey George, has described the decision by West African Examination Council (WAEC) to sue the Africa Education Watch for their report on the 2020 WASSCE leakage as a laughable endeavor.
He alleged the examination body conducted an examination that was compromised, leakages that WAEC has admitted to happening. Therefore, they cannot parade around that the integrity of the examination was intact.
Mr George claimed that because of the political capital that was channeled into the examination by the Akufo-Addo government led to the leakage for many students to pass in order to justify the merit of the Free SHS policy in the country.
According to the Ningo-Prampram legislator, if WAEC is serious about exam leakages and their reputation, they will be concerned about the reported issues of leakages and take credible steps to stop these perennial leakages that happen under their auspices.
Rather than taking a defensive position by threatening lawsuits and thinking that the court will be used to silence any independent outfit such as the Africa Education Watch, then they will go to court to establish the basis of their report.
He made this pronouncement in an interview with Berla Mundi on the New Day show on TV3, Thursday, June 24.
He was commenting on the back of the report published by the Africa Education Watch on the leakage of examination questions in the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations(WASSCE) which has been touted by the West African Examination Council(WAEC) as the best since 2015.
“It is interesting the position WAEC has taken, it’s not just interesting but it’s laughable. Anybody who has followed this and anybody who has followed the educational sector knows that WAEC has fundamental challenges. The integrity of exams that WAEC has conducted has come under increasing public scrutiny and criticism over the integrity of the exams. And the processes that govern the chain of command of exam questions before the examinations and so if the African Education Watch has put out its report in a document, WAEC is not necessarily contesting with incontrovertible evidence the facts that they have put out but WAEC is threatening legal action, I mean it is most shocking, it is most disturbing to see WAEC wants to flex its muscles. Did we have leakage of exams? Yes we did, we had leakage of exams. The questions leaked, WAEC itself admitted that the questions leaked”, he said.
Mr George queried if WAEC has conducted any investigation to ascertain which part of the chain of custody the leakage happened? He asked if the leakage happened when the exam questions were in the custody of WAEC or after it had moved?
He said reading the report by the Africa Education Watch, it appears the the leakage occurred at the dawn of the examination, at which point in time the questions may have been moved from WAEC’s custody into the custody of the Ghana Education Service(GES) and the Ghana Police Service, two agencies of government to superintend its sanctity.
“So will it be fair to say that as soon as the document got into the hands of the government agencies there was a leak? Did we hear and see the political spin that was put to this exam and how much political capital was spent on whether people passed or failed? And why that would be an incentive for government and its agencies to want to manipulate the system and just get these ‘Akufo-Addo graduates’ as they are called to go through the system?” Mr George quizzed.
