The Real Cause of Examination Malpractices in Ghana

It was sometime in May, 2009. I was living with frineds in a rented house in Keta, and we were preparing for the 2009 May/June WASSCE. We were four; two of us in Ketasco and the other two in Ketabusco. On the eve of the Matematics paper, sometime in the evening, a girl from Zion College, Anloga, being a girlfrined to one of the Busco boys, came visiting, and showed us some questions she got from God knows where. I recall her telling us that they were the Maths questions that will be appearing in the exam the very next day.

We were very good students, hence, were not very much enthusiatic of getting hold of some easy "apor." But we took a look at it anyway, and had our doubts confrimed. The questions appeared “too cheap” to be the ones that will appear in the exams; so said we among ourselves, and didn’t even bother solving them.

Come the next day, we went to write the Maths paper and those very questions appeared. That was the first time I had the experince of knowing that exam questions can truly get leaked.Later on I wondered how this could be, and surmised that it was all because we have a messed up education system that focuses more on exam passing than skill posession and imagginative/creative thinking, hence the unbounded desire on the part of most students (especially the super lazy ones, which is the majority) to pass their exams by hook or crook.

Yesterday, the news came out that the ongoing BECE (Basic Examination Certificate Examinations) is also suffering this same fate. And I wonder further “how could this be?”

Is it not because we have a dumbed down education system that prefers rote learning to study in depth? Is it not because we have an education system that is tailored to exam passing more than the acquistition of life skills, critical thinking, and imaginative thought on the part of students? Is it not because we have an examination body—WAEC—which is more interested in making money than providing quality examinations?

Government's messing with the educational system at the pre-tertiary levels in 2007/2008, the lowering of senior high school admission standards in 2012/2013 to accomodate the ridicoulously high number of students who failed their BECE, the decision to put in place a resit opportunity for students who fail their exams at the junior high school level and yestersday’s leakage of the ongoing exams all make the aforementioned questions rhetorical.

A poorly structured (and poorly run) education system–that’s the main cause of examination malpracticies in Ghana.