The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), Kofi Asare, says widespread examination malpractice in Ghana’s senior high schools is being driven by unrealistic performance targets set for teachers and headmasters — not merely by student misconduct.
Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Wednesday (29 October), Asare said Eduwatch’s latest monitoring report on the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) found that more than half of monitors witnessed cases of collusion and malpractice in the exam centres they observed.
“If we write a paper and 10 percent of the people in that paper are subject to malpractice, that’s huge — we’re talking about 50,000 candidates,” he said. “This is not an isolated issue; it’s systemic.”
From Leaks to Collusion
According to Asare, Eduwatch has been monitoring WASSCE activities since 2019 across 100 schools, using trained teacher-monitors. In 2025, the organisation expanded to 150 schools due to a surge in reports of cheating.
He explained that since 2023, the nature of malpractice has shifted from the leakage of exam questions to collusion inside examination halls, as the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) tightened question security under WAEC’s supervision.
“Cheating strategies have evolved. Now that questions no longer leak easily, schools and students collude during the exam itself,” he said. “It’s become a labour-intensive issue because we now have to monitor what happens in real time at over 1,000 centres.”
Weak Supervision Enabling Cheating
Eduwatch’s report found that WAEC’s external supervisors were present at most centres for only one to three days during the entire 20-day exam period, spending an average of just 60 to 90 minutes per visit.
“Where WAEC is present, collusion doesn’t happen. But once they leave, it becomes a field day,” Asare noted. “This shows WAEC’s physical presence is woefully inadequate, mainly because of underfunding.”
He revealed that the West African Examinations Council requires over 200 additional staff to strengthen oversight but remains “ruthlessly underfunded,” with its operations severely constrained by delayed government subventions.
Calls for CCTV and Tech-Based Oversight
To tackle the problem, Mr Asare renewed Eduwatch’s recommendation for the installation of solar-powered CCTV cameras in examination halls to ensure transparency.
“Once exams are done, the footage should accompany the scripts sent to WAEC,” he said. “We can start with schools that have examination halls or dining halls. It’s a low-hanging fruit — a good CCTV camera costs about $3,000 to $4,000.”
Scrap Pass-Rate KPIs for Teachers
Asare also argued that school heads and teachers are pressured to cheat because of unrealistic performance indicators set by the Ghana Education Service (GES), which require them to achieve a 60 percent pass rate in subjects like mathematics.
“Many teachers resort to collusion because their promotions and recognition depend on these pass-rate KPIs,” he said. “If we scrap the KPIs based on results, we remove the motivation for malpractice.”
Instead, he proposed that teacher KPIs should focus on teaching effort, such as lesson delivery, homework, and student feedback — not exam outcomes.
Systemic Resource Gaps
Asare said it was unfair to expect teachers to meet strict targets while schools faced massive infrastructure and resource deficits.
“Over 600,000 furniture units are needed in our schools; 9,000 teacher accommodations and 10,000 dormitory rooms are still outstanding,” he explained. “In some schools, students have not received the tablets required under the new curriculum.”
He added that, under such constraints, “KPIs become unrealistic and counterproductive, forcing schools to find shortcuts to meet them.”
Accountability and Integrity
Asare called for the introduction of “exam integrity KPIs” for headmasters, where any case of malpractice detected through WAEC’s software or reports would be tied to their performance evaluations.
He also clarified that Eduwatch does not believe WAEC’s results are entirely unreliable, but the integrity of the system remains scarred by widespread malpractice and under-supervision.
“It’s not that WAEC’s results can’t be trusted,” he stressed. “But the systemic drivers of malpractice — poor supervision, underfunding, and unrealistic expectations — must be fixed.”
On Hair Rules in Schools
Commenting on Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu’s recent remarks on student hairstyles, Asare said the directive was nothing new.
“There’s no new ban on long hair; it’s a regulation that has existed for decades,” he said. “Uniformity is crucial in managing large schools. If everyone comes with their preferred hairstyle, it becomes lawlessness.”
He added that schools should focus on discipline and learning, not running in-house beauty salons.
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