WAEC introduces new rules

March 19, 2008
Page 31

THE West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has introduced two new rules to guide the conduct of examinations.
The rules, which would take effect from next year, would be applied to both Basic Education Certificate Examination, May/June West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the November/December WASSCE.
The Deputy Registrar and Head of the International Examination Department of WAEC, Mr Charles Eguridu, announced this at the 2008 WAEC Day Students Symposium in Accra on Monday.
It was on the theme: “Improving Educational Assessment Processes Through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Current Trends in Examination Malpractices”.
Mr Eguridu said where a candidate, contrary to guidelines, failed to write his or her name on an answer booklet before the commencement of an examination, the candidate’s subject result shall be withheld pending cancellation by the appointment committee to the council.
Secondly, he said, where the candidate shaded with ink instead of pencil, the candidate’s subject result shall be withheld pending cancellation by the appointment committee to the council.
The Head of the Security Printing Department of WAEC, Rev Nii Nnai Ollenu, reminded students to abide by examination rules to avoid being sanctioned.
He mentioned some cases of malpractices as taking foreign materials to examination hall, collusion and insulting invigilators, and attributed the problem to inadequate preparation, negative peer influence, and the quest to uphold the status of schools.
He said once a student was caught, the implications included the cancellation of results, inconvenience of rewriting the examination, as well as the financial implication of re-registering for the examination.
An Assistant Registrar, Mr Ben Owusu Ofori, said the world had been taken over by ICT, which the council had adopted for test administration.
According to him, the manual processing of registration, which took a lot of man hours, had given way to on-line registration, saying that “today, registration has come to the doorsteps of candidates”.
He also mentioned the checking of results on the Internet, among other things, and urged students to make maximum use of ICT facilities, and not abuse them or use them for fraudulent activities.
In a presentation, Mr John Avande of the Computer Services Division, said for instance, the use of ICT had contributed greatly to the selection of quality objective questions which was done through the use of item analysis report to select questions.
“With the growing numbers of candidates, the use of Information Technology helps to process the large volumes of data faster. The latest method of educational assessment is being used by TOEFL. This method has gone a very long way to eliminate the canker of leakages and malpractices in examinations,” he said.