4 Students Fined For Exam Fraud

A Pen

A CIRCUIT Court has convicted four final year students, including one female, for their involvement in examination fraud.

The convicts are students of Saint Margret Senior High School (SHS) in Obuasi

Moro Ayishietu, 19, Stephen Frimpong, 20, Francis Ahimadu, 19, and Shaibu Moomin, 23, were caught red-handed by a Principal Assistant Registrar of the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC), busily copying solved questions of the council's Mathematics core paper two conducted on April 24, 2011.

They were convicted on their own plea of guilty and given a concurrent sentence to pay a fine of GH¢ 1,000 each for two counts of having fore-knowledge of examination papers and copying in an examination.

DSP Yaw Obeng Asubonteng, police prosecutor, told the court presided over by Gilbert Ayisi Addo that the accused persons were examination candidates and students of St. Margret SHS, who were writing their final exams conducted by WAEC.

While writing the Mathematics core paper two at the school's centre on April 24, 2011, a principal assistant registrar of WAEC, Kwaku Appiah, visited the centre at about 11am.

On entering the examination hall, the registrar found Moro Ayishietu, Stephen Frimpong and Francis Ahimadu busily copying solved questions of the subject in question into their answer booklets.

DSP Asubonteng said the registrar accosted the three and enquired about their source of the 'material', to which Ayishietu, the first accused person, mentioned Shaibu as the person who passed it on to her for copying.

Shaibu, the fourth accused, also claimed the solved examination question paper, which appeared to be a photocopy of the original question paper, was thrown into the examination hall by an unknown person, the court was told.

The incident was later reported to the police and after investigations, they were charged and arraigned for prosecution.

From Ernest Kofi Adu, Obuasi