Stakeholders in the education sector including educationists and parents yesterday decried the poor performance of students in the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).
The results released yesterday indicated that out of the 1,969,313 candidates who sat for the examination, only 754,545 candidates, representing 38.32 per cent, obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
It would be recalled that during this year’s exam, some school adopted the Computer Based Test method while others opted for the Paper Based Test method.
The Head of Nigeria’s Office (HNO) of WAEC, Amos Dangut, who announced the release of the results during a media briefing at the examination body’s headquarters in Lagos, stated that this year’s result showed a 33.8 per cent decrease in performance compared to 72.12 per cent recorded in 2024.
He stated that results of 192,089 candidates, representing 9.75 per cent of the total number of candidates were withheld over various reported cases of malpractice.
According to him, the figure represented a 2.17 per cent decline compared to the 11.92 per cent recorded in the 2024 edition of the same examination.
He said that 1,973,365 candidates registered for the examination from 23,554 recognised secondary schools in Nigeria, but 1,969,313 candidates sat for the examination.
“The examination was also administered to candidates from some schools in Benin Republic, Cote d’Ivoire and Equatorial Guinea, where the Nigerian curriculum for senior secondary schools is being used.
“I also wish to report that a total of 12,178 candidates with varying degrees of special needs registered for the examination.
“Out of this number, 112 were visually challenged, 615 had impaired hearing, 52 were spastic cum mentally challenged, and 37 were physically challenged.
“All these candidates were adequately provided for in the administration of the examination,” the WAEC boss said.
He gave the assurance that the results of the candidates had been processed and were also released along with those of other candidates.
“Of the total number of 1,969,313 candidates that sat for the examination, 976,787 were males while 992,526 were females, representing 49.60 per cent and 50.40 per cent, respectively.
“Out of the total number of candidates that sat for the examination in Nigeria, 1,517,517 candidates, representing 77.06 per cent, have their results fully processed and released while 451,796 candidates, representing 22.94 per cent, have one or more of their subjects still being processed due to some issues to be resolved.
“Efforts are, however, being made to speedily complete the processes to enhance the release of the affected candidates’ results within a couple of days,” he said.
The 38.32 per cent performance for this year is the worst performance in years, The Intercept gathered.
Further findings revealed that the result is the poorest compared to those recorded since 2020.
In 2020, the examination body announced that 1,003,668 candidates, representing 65.24 per cent out of 1,601,047 who sat for the exams, obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
The following year, 2021, saw an improvement of 81.7 per cent pass rate recorded, translating to 16 per cent while it reduced to 76.36 per cent in 2022, representing more than 5 per cent decline in performance.
In 2023, the examination body recorded 79.81 per cent pass rate including those who made English and Mathematics papers while the pass rate reduced to 72.12 in 2024.
The examination’s body attributed the low record in pass rate to Computer Based Test (CBT) and serialisation approach, describing them as the innovative method to tackle examination malpractice.
The Head of Nigeria’s Office (HNO) of WAEC, Amos Dangut stressed that the serialisation approach deployed in the objective test question papers for Mathematics, English Language, Biology, and Economics exposed candidates copying from each other, a development which contributed to failure in those subjects.
“Under this approach, each candidate was assigned a specific paper type, making collusion and other forms of examination malpractice extremely difficult to perpetrate.
“Despite sternly advising candidates to work independently, we still recorded cases of candidates assigned different question papers who copied one another and had the same answers in virtually all questions.
“The effect of this activity was evident in the overall performance of candidates in the said papers. While performance in the essay papers remained comparable to those of the previous years, that of the objective papers recorded a slight but noticeable decline,” he said.
He noted that there was a decline from 11.5 to 9.75 per cent in the malpractice records in this year’s result.
