Everything is ready for the theoretical aspect of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates, which begins tomorrow, August 20, with the Oral English exam. The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has confirmed that it has received sufficient funding from the government for the examination and has dispatched all depot keepers and materials to their respective centers.
John Kapi, the Head of Public Affairs for WAEC, stated in an interview with the Daily Graphic yesterday, “As for funds, I think we are in a comfortable position right now. We have dispatched all the depot keepers and all the materials for the centers.”
In total, 65 subjects will be offered, with each candidate expected to take an average of eight subjects. Approximately 461,640 candidates nationwide will participate, comprising 207,381 male candidates and 254,259 female candidates. The examinations will be held at around 701 centers across the country.
Practicals
On August 5, 2025, the practicals of the WASSCE for School Candidates took off smoothly in senior high and technical schools across the country. It involved candidates undertaking projects they had been assigned to carry out as part of the examination, with the first essay and objective papers for Picture Making expected to have been written at 1 p.m. yesterday. “We have also dispatched the first batch of question papers. We normally dispatch the question papers in batches,” Mr Kapi said.
“So, the first batch has been dispatched,” he added. In the troubled areas of Bawku, Nalerigu and Zuarungu in the Upper East Region, he said several arrangements had been put in place for candidates to sit the examination. In Bawku, for instance, Mr Kapi said examination officials would pick up the question papers at Zebilla, where WAEC had a depot, under police escort and then return them the same way at the end of the day.
Regarding Nalerigu and Nkwanta in the Oti Region, he said there had been increased police presence, and that the “responses that we have received indicate that there is relative calm in those areas”. On Zuarungu, he said a number of the candidates had opted to go to Bawku to write their papers, especially those who hail from that area, as they felt safer there. “So provision has been made for them to write the examination in an area that is comfortable for them,” he said.
Mr Kapi admonished all parents, guardians, teachers, invigilators and supervisors to ensure candidates do independent work. “We are still preaching the gospel of zero tolerance for examination malpractice. They should ensure that independent work is done, and they should avoid giving mobile phones to them, snapping question papers, and even sending photocopied answers to candidates in examination halls,” he said. He said the consequences for such acts would be dire once they were detected.
GES
The Ghana Education Service (GES) has also warned that any supervisor or invigilator caught engaging in examination malpractice in this year’s WASSCE for School Candidates would be dismissed. It said the GES Council had given the service the power to dismiss any supervisor or invigilator found assisting or having assisted candidates to cheat.
The GES, therefore, advised supervisors and invigilators to comport themselves and to refrain from acts that could bring the examination into disrepute. The acting Director-General of the GES, Professor Ernest Kofi Davis, stressed this at a news conference on the 2025 WASSCE for school Candidates in Accra.
Source: Emmanuel Bonney
