WAEC: The Shylock Businessman

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) was born out of repressive move to end imperialism and Western influence in Africa by African elites in the mid20^th Century. It was not until 1952 that the junior and Senior Cantab examinations instituted since 1876 for British West African Students who opted for the Durham and Cambridge University were severed in replacement for genuinely West African Examination Body. Like its predecessor, the West African Examination Body was/is charged with responsibility of conducting, organizing, and managing examinations in the region; plus fashioning its own curricula suitable for the region.“For the first twenty years (1952-1972),” as put by Anthony Kamara, “the conduct of school exams had been free of scandals.” Those were the days of nationalism.

However, like many of Africa’s institutions, the WAEC is becoming a useless and exploitative force for the sons and daughters of Africa. It has unjustly killed and is killing the aspirations of many of our young generation. Above all, it is losing recognition in many parts of the world. The World is becoming a global village, and Africa is becoming more united than ever. We cannot afford being obstinate on standard. Literarily, our institutions should go global in terms of standard.

With Morocco’s call for its reinstatement into the AU, the precatory move to launch an AU passport for Africa overall to facilitate intra-trade and ensure travel boredom relieve for all Africans, businesses and institutions must take a preparative steps to upgrade its standards and services so as to withstand the gale of competition once the borders are eroded by this ambitious policy action permitting for more inter-country movement.

The placement of WAEC (since 1952) as the soul gate keeper to Sierra Leone education is the biggest reason, among other reasons, for the retrogressing state of our education in this era of competitiveness; and no one seems to care or be concerned about the several abnormalities in the external examinations so far. If there is one thing we know for sure about the way WAEC administer its questionnaires, for Sierra Leone, it is that they receive question papers in cartoons delivered to them printed from nowhere we know into their Tower Hill head office in Freetown where they are counted and enveloped for distribution across its different centers, during which course its confidants pilfer some questionnaires for its rogue clients. No wonder question papers are mostly found short when ready for distribution in examination halls. They will give a bogus excuse of investigating the matter when asked to say something. And no one questions them—the institution is a sacred cow. And when such dubious acts are committed, it is the poor and sometimes innocent pupils who suffer. Some of whom would have their results being withheld with or without (which is far too often the case) committing any examination malpractices. And government does nothing about it. They do this with impunity. Government or its agencies mount no investigation into the matter. They do not want to know, for instance, the circumstances which led to the leakage or say who were in charge of question papers at the central offices, nor do they care to ask whether those pupils whose results were withheld by WAEC had fill any form during their course of taking the examination incriminating them. All they do is stand aside and watch their youth’s feature being put into jeopardy.

Worse of all, the WAEC in several instances have shown unprofessionalism and incompetence in terms of keeping accurate record of pupils. They are much disorganized in all ways. Time without number we have seen cases where pupils retrieve their online and school attestation results with their faces either missing or unidentifiable to/with them. A boy could be given a girl’s face, a girl with a man’s face, and sometimes pupils’ names and information are disfigured (pupils sometimes receive on their attestations result credit for subjects that they did not put in for in the examination), which put to question the accuracy and authenticity of retrieved results. It takes at least 3 years for successful students to receive original copy of their results (18 months for Gambia); they get short of question papers and answer booklets(the case of St. Francis Secondary School in 1978/79, and many more); they do not have control of their officials and question papers but could seize helpless students’ results for comparison; leakages pup up rampantly almost every year without any of their officers being caught culpable, so on and so forth, the institution continues to demonstrate their incapability and redundancy without any actions taken. I wonder why until now the government has not issued WAEC a business license. Question papers are available for sale before exams; supervisors should be bought for a certain amount to compromise their supervision; pupils should hasten to Freetown to see officers who mark their answer booklets lest it is too late; pupils who want to pursue their courses overseas are granted placement into the archives altering another person’s information; script markers are paid based on the number of booklets they could complete within a given period of time (as if it is motor speed race);and government aiding their enterprise by permitting for investigation only for reasons why results are seized and not reasons for leakages.

Instead of recruiting more qualified teachers, building more classrooms to accommodate the growing number of pupils, equipping schools with libraries and theatres, and putting the curricular designs for schools in per with the job market, the Government and its politburos are busy devising ways to prolong the lifespan of schooling, and in filtering out pupils who either because of poor educational system or other socioeconomic factors cannot make it in the BECE or WASSCE. In the words of Anthony Kamara (Snr), “…they are focused on next election.”

Equally responsible for this retrogressing state of education in this country are the local elitists. It is fascinating how parliament in a matter of short time could sign into effect the switchover policy from 6334 system to 6344 system of education which basically adds one more year in the seniorhigh.This policy action they believe, as put forward in Professor Gbamanja whitepaper, would give teachers enough time to complete the broad WAEC syllabus for the senior high, and help reduce the number of failures in the WASSCE. Fundamentally I see this move as a deliberate attempt to further worsen the dropout rate among female students who have been victims of everyday abuse and exploitation by teachers. Male students would equally suffer indirectly if their sponsors cannot afford paying for them for another protracted year, considering the fact that the average Sierra Leonean is either underemployed or a proletariat living on less than $2 a day. Plus theno-gratis policy for repeaters, the thin line between the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ is boldly drawn. The policy action has the potential to worsen inequality and create a mass underemployment among youth, and further broaden the poverty circle for most families. The rich could afford to pay for their children to take the private WASSCE if they fail at first attempt, whilst the poor who cannot afford the charges for the examination should take to ‘OKADA’ riding or any other underemployed career to survive the system— the class system.

Furthermore, looking at the entire educational system of Sierra Leone today, a lot of frustrations lies within the expectation of people in the government to make serious adjustments in the system and all these adjustments are more attached to the way in which Exams are conducted in both internal and external level. The educational system of this country is really is becoming more deteriorated every day and an angle that is contributing to this tragedy is the country’s reliability on the WAEC as body responsible for external exams throughout the country. Exams are now conducted with less or no attention paid to the possible malpractices that might take place or factors that may provoke the value of the results of these external examinations.

Our reliability on WAEC is one of the greatest weaknesses of our country today in maintaining a highly structured and fair educational system. Students manage to squeeze out of their ability to sustain themselves and pay for  entry into this external examinations, they spend their valuable time and additional amount of money in preparing themselves to go for the exams and at the end their results from the external exams will be ceased with no exact evidence or reasons. There is no mechanism to make sure that students who have their results ceased are given the chance to defend these results and at the end of everything what happens is that students become frustrated and out of option in choosing their path of life. This frustration has amounted to a huge amount of discouraged and highly disgruntled youths roaming about the streets with no job, no hope and this really put the future our country at stake. WAEC should be one of those factors to give high considerations to if we want to restore the educational system of our beloved Sierra Leone to a more world standard one. Exams are conducted with a high malpractice tendency, less external exams austerity measures and above all innocent students are mixed with the guilty ones when it comes to ceasing results in the name of Exams malpractice reasons. How can a body with such a disorganized system be given the responsibility to oversee the conduct of our country’s most important exams in the educational system.

Maybe we should take WAEC as a business entity established to maximize profit; in accounting the higher the revenue, the higher the tendency to make profit and for WAEC this means the higher the failures especially in WASSCE, the higher the tendency for them to make profit. Taking in facts, the sharp and fast increase in the cost of a scratch card to access result is one good factor to evaluate whether the so called exams body WAEC is operating as a business entity or an independent fair educational system ingredient established for effective facilitating of external exams in our country. WAEC has been very instrumental in not only frustrating the educational sector of this country but it has also succeeded in creating some virus that will grow to destroy the other advantage the system has if it has to revive ever again; the question is, How long are we going to sit and watch while this single exam body destroy our most precious educational system or we are going to do something about it.

The world is really moving forward and very fast, maybe Sierra Leone should too. If we are to move forward, we must start with fixing what needs to be fixed in our educational system—creating new credible means of assessing our students.