The West African Examination Council, WAEC, has revealed that some cheating students in a hurry to submit their answer booklets to invigilators during exams often forget their expo (materials used for examination malpractice).
The Public Relations Officer of the exams body, Demianus Ojijeogu, told Punch that the council is currently fighting hard to bring the rate of malpractice during the exam to the barest minimum.
He said, “We encounter malpractice during the examination and during marking. Some leave the expo in the answer booklets. We see that all the time. Others use other answer booklets different from the council’s own. But, we discover these things during marking because the booklets do not have our serial numbers and they are not usually signed by the supervisors. Supervisors usually sign the booklets before they are given to the candidates.
“We have been able to handle impersonation through our biometric process but there is still collusion where candidates will copy exactly the same answers usually dictated by a teacher. We have our invigilators but the number is limited. When you leave the centre or before we get there, they will do what they want.”
He added that the council was still dealing with challenges of collusion, which involved teachers aiding candidates during examination.
“We no longer make noise about examination malpractice because examination supervision is a hazardous job. When candidates engage in malpractice, we just take their number and they fill a form. Some of our workers have been held hostage, female supervisors have been harassed. It is a hazardous job,” he added. The examination board had since released the 2016 May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE, results.
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