Serialization of papers will seal the problem of leakages
The Ministry of Education (MoE) is pushing for the serialization of WASSCE papers in order to solve the issue of leakages during examinations in the country.
This follows leakages of some exam papers in the ongoing WASSCE.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) rescheduled the conduct of the 2021 WASSCE physics and Business Management 1 & 2 papers over alleged leakage last Wednesday.
The two suspended exam papers were scheduled to be administered on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, at 8:00 am by the Examinations Council at various examination centers across the country.
Over 446,000 final year students representing 221,437 males and 234,884 females from 965 Senior High Schools, i.e; 651 public schools and 314 private schools in Ghana are partaking in the ongoing international examination.
Meanwhile, Operatives of the National Security arrested one Gideon Darko, who was reported to be behind the rogue website, Jerusalema, which is purported to be leaking question papers in the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
The suspect was arrested on Friday at his hideout in Kasoa in the Central Region.
Speaking on Atinka TV’s morning show, Ghana Nie with Ekourba Gyasi Simpremu, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Ministry of Education, Mr Kwasi Kwarteng expressed worry over the situation, saying aside from stressing innocent students, the leakages downgrade the credibility of the examination.
He said although leakages cannot be eliminated completely from the system, the Ministry will ensure to make it expensive for those who try to indulge in such practices.
Despite taking note of digitization, Mr Kwasi Kwarteng said it cannot completely be the solution since there will still be human interference before the papers get to the students.
Rather, he suggested a serialization of the exams papers so that in case one leaks, there will still be options for the students in order to prevent the occasion of canceling or rescheduling exams.
“If we have about 20 or 10 different sets of questions and you leak one, there will be 9 or 19 more sets of questions and the student will not know which one is coming,” he said.
He added that “We are in talks with WAEC so that the serialization will solve this problem once and for all.”
Mr Kwasi Kwarteng, therefore, called on all stakeholders to support the Ministry’s quest in pushing for the serialization of exams papers to solve the issue of leakages and malpractices moving forward.